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God bless the freedom to express ourselves! Enjoy the following submission by Mercado Indanti.
Who Will Lead Hartford?
Mercado Indanti
Tug McGraw, professional baseball pitcher, had a motto “You gotta believe.” The
Pointer sisters, professional singers, intoned “You got to believe in something,”
which is followed by, Why not, Why not believe in Me? These two philosophic
sources, although different in ethnicity and gender were in agreement on one thing:
“You have to believe.” This would make you follower. The women being more specific,
suggest that they should be believed in. This would surely make their audience
‘ists’ or possibly followers. Indeed other songs, both pop and hymnal, suggest that
one should “Follow me.” What this all suggests is that we all must believe
something or in something. We cannot run scared. We all are part of the human race
and interdependent social creatures. We follow leaders of the ruling estate’s
social theories, be they set in democracies, monarchies, oligarchies or
dictatorships. One could say that all humans are socialists or followers of a
social theory. That social theory developed mainly by the members of ruling estate
with some help from hand-picked members of the remaining estates: the clergy,
commoners and the press. This hand-picking process is known as politicing and
election.
Everywhere there exists a social theory and a social order. This order is
structured in classes or strata arranged in convenient pecking orders call estates.
The estates (that we have adopted from ancient times) are: first, the royals;
second, the clergy; third, the commoners; and fourth, a mob, the army, or a
collective action agency. Upon the advent of large populations and mass production,
the press replaced the army and it became the Fourth Estate, and thus the pen
became mightier than the sword. It is the priority and the nature of the estates
in the social order that we feel and react to every day. Feeling low, feeling like
you are on the bottom, and feeling someone else is on top has to do with social
order more so than racism or elitism. When you’re feeling ganged-up on, as an
example, is it that the other estates are working in collusion against you? We all
know what it is like to feel divorced from the state or the church, or
misrepresented by the the press. Knowing the estates goes a long way in determining
your estate singularly, and collectively your city’s estate and lot.
From the commoners, the pastors and press people come candidates who play vital
roles in determining policy, and manpower in the lower positions of the ruling or
govermental process, which very much includes local government for a local
government, like the one in Hartford, CT, effectiveness is dependant not only on a
strong mayor and complementary city council, but also on a socially active clergy
and investigative and unbias reporting press. The citizenry must hold the estate of
the clergy accountable when a small church Reverand’s excuses his social inactivity
by saying “politics isn’t my role.” When the minority owned paper’s editor doesn’t
report a story that goes against the establishment’s interest and says “there is
not enough room in this week’s issue,’ the people should hold that institution,
within the fourth estate, responsible.
Within The Church, which some say is the black’s only institution, some think that
the clergy, the second estate, are the keepers of our fates and fortunes. If this
is the case then their agressive activism must be supported on the same level as it
was during the ministries of Martin Luther King and Jerry Falwell. King was more
than a Reverand Dr. he was the embodiment of a complete social theory,
non-violence. We have many Reverand Dr’s. in the community, however, we must push
them to become instruments of social change. Considering all of the time, education
and hope that our community invests in its Reverands it doesn’t seems to much to
ask that they go back to school and get a masters in Public Administration so that
they can, at least, feel qualifed to become a mayor. The clergy must be given a
church atmosphere where they don’t feel limited in fighting for the rights of those who
think Reverands are the spiritual representatives for final justice.
The plight of the institution of minority newspapers seems to be reflected in the
economic times where the least capitalized of the institutions began to fail first.
The pressure to fold because of high costs and reduced readership felt now by main
line dailies has been felt by the minority owner for more than ten years. Now there
are no known popular black dailies. Interestingly such is not the case with
hispanic dailies. This could lead one to think that there is a lack of support
mixed with the issues of high costs and reduced readership. High costs are a given
for the industry. But maybe the proliferation in newpaper companies caused the
mainliners’ reduced readership. Perhaps, the reduced readership of black-owned
papers is a result of non-support (causing spotty distribution), apathy, the
reading levels of their readers, and an ancient myth.
How can the press help defend you against administrative, legal and social
injustices if you don’t want to read about the injustices nor the remedies for
those injustices? The black newspaper owner cannot be blamed if his readership
chooses to perpetuate the myth that black people do not like to read. He can only
be blamed if his paper is crowded with superfically edited versions of news wire
stories that do not futher the social cause of his readership. The press must be
given the support to warrant their battling to keep their Hartford readers current
or to be their court of last resort i.e., public opinion.
From these estates Clergy, Press, and the Public, shall come the people to change
unpopular governments and policy and the supporters of those most active in that
change. Those who wish to become more effective in social change need to be
knowledgeable and familiar with each estate and supported by the public. During the
politicing and campaigning process many will say “you got to believe” and “follow
me.” But, who will say, “on the basis of my being very familiar with the common
man, the church and press, why not, why not believe in me?”
