City Manager Has No Clothes

                                          

 Emperor Augustus Has No Clothes

The profound failure of the City Manager’s, Edward Augustus, so called dialog on race was sadly exposed at the June 29, 2015 hearing. There were no new proposals and no new ideas. The apologists for the City could not put pretend clothes on the naked truth.

Worse still is that most of the participants were stakeholders such as CEOs of non profits or coordinators from City departments.  Very few people attending were unemployed or a so called minority. For the discussions the participants were divided into Groups.

In group 9 to which I was assigned there was a discussion of small business development. One person had started a juice bar and told us of how she thought that local banks were better than national banks in that the local banks usually make loans locally. She also speculated that many of the people who worked in restaurants and worked as openers or closers did the grunt work and were paid under the table.

An older Hispanic man talked about his many years of experience running a business and his degree in management. He said that he attended a seminar at one of the Universities in Worcester and the information about running a business was too academic. He was looking for the resources to start his own business.

An assistant to the City Manager was in the group. When he was asked about the City providing more information in a timelier manner about projects in the City so that working people could have some say in the negotiations, the assistant manager said that the information could be found on a quarterly basis on the City Clerk’s website. He also said that a lot of information was private and available to the City, let alone the public in general. The Labor Coalition proposed the reservation of some jobs on big projects for local residents.

In group 4 a young man who said he led a Youth Anti Racism group and the capitalism was the sources of racial disparities. He concluded that racial disparities would continue until the abolition of capitalism.

                              

In Group 3 there was a short discussion of systemic or structural racism. One woman raised the problems found in poor education and the school to jail pipeline.

The hearings are essentially over. There is one more in which the notes of the hearings will be reviewed. This review is just a formality as solutions to race problems will not be found there and that is the naked truth.