Frank Rizzo statue removal is a political distraction. Let's not lose focus.

Hooray! We've Disappeared The Frank Rizzo Statue…

… which helps precisely zero black lives today. Call back the civil rights-era admonition to proceed our eyes on the prize?

Jun. 05, 2020

Here nosotros get again, falling for the ol' political okey-doke. That's the first matter I thought when I heard that, in the dead of night, Mayor Kenney had disappeared the Frank Rizzo statue.

You know the term okey-doke, right? Its roots can be establish in African-American parlance, as Barack Obama and Spike Lee, among others, have schooled us. "They're trying to bamboozle yous," Obama told a predominantly black Southward Carolina crowd in 2008. "It's the same old okey-doke. You know nearly the okey-doke, correct?…They endeavor to baffle you lot. Hoodwink you."

He was talking most the typical tricks of the political merchandise, the trounce game practiced pols play with your attending span, enticing you lot to wait one way in society to strategically divert your gaze.

How was Kenney's midnight raid on Rizzo the okey-doke? Could it take been a coincidence that it occurred just hours after his constabulary force tear-gassed peaceful protestors? Or that information technology took place at a time when his revamped budget proposal zeroes out funding for his own authorities'south Office of Workforce Development—the very role charged with helping disproportionately black citizens escape poverty? Or that he decimates the Commerce Department's upkeep past 85 percent, obliterating the funding of economic development programs?

This is non an argument for keeping the Frank Rizzo statue. It is, instead, a warning to not repeat the social change mistakes of the past. Call up the civil rights-era admonition to keep our eyes on the prize?

"The presence on a daily basis of that Rizzo statue represented an intractable racist system to the oppressed," says filmmaker Gary Cohen. "I believe that the progressive goals you talk about are more attainable today at present that Rizzo is gone. That empty space in front of the Municipal Services Building is modify."

Today, that focus should be on the real needs of real people whose lives in this perilous moment take descended into economic chaos and hopelessness.

Co-ordinate to MoneyGeek's data scientific discipline and analytics team, Philadelphia has lost 440,000 jobs since the dawn of the pandemic; those who worked in leisure and hospitality, which includes many African Americans, take been striking the hardest: down 57 percent.

We already had 400,000 of our fellow citizens subsisting below the poverty line—$21,000 a year for a family of three. Our poverty rate of 25 percent was already the worst in the nation earlier Covid-19. Where are nosotros at now? 35 pct? 40?

Gloat all you desire about the removal of a statue, but it runs the risk of letting the free energy of this moment dissipate into satisfaction with a but symbolic victory. I'm all for Rizzo and his Mussolini-like salute exiting the scene, simply let's stipulate that it helps precisely zero blackness folk today, and that progressives have a trend to unwittingly be bought off past grand ane-off gestures, while the harder work of reforming systems gets forgotten later on the protests end.

Then over again, perchance it ought not to be seen every bit an either/or suggestion. "Symbols affair," says Gary Cohen, the filmmaker behind the forthcoming groundbreaking pic about MOVE I wrote near last month. "I'grand a storyteller. I brand sense of the world using symbols. The presence on a daily footing of that Rizzo statue represented an intractable racist system to the oppressed. I believe that the progressive goals y'all talk nearly are more accessible today now that Rizzo is gone. That empty space in front of the Municipal Services Building is modify."

It's a strong point, passionately made. Symbols do affair in storytelling. The problem is that, when it comes to racial justice and minority economic empowerment, especially here in Philly, our story too often feels like Groundhog Day. In times of intractable political gridlock, when at that place'due south a fissure of light opening for effecting real change, you risk wasting an opportunity past basking in pyrrhic victories.

"The one civil-rights cause I was near involved in was the push to make Martin Luther Rex Jr.'s altogether a national holiday," former Wharton professor Ken Shropshire, who now runs Arizona State University'south Global Sport Establish, once told me. "I don't regret it. But, now, decades later, I wonder, after all those marches, that was it? We got a holiday. But what issue did we have?"

I'm all for Rizzo and his Mussolini-like salute exiting the scene, merely allow's stipulate that it helps precisely zero blackness folk today, and that progressives take a trend to unwittingly be bought off by m one-off gestures, while the harder piece of work of reforming systems gets forgotten after the protests end.

That, also, is a skilful bespeak. Regarding King, yes, we got a substantive day of service, only we also got a mainstream whitewashing of King's real legacy—in his concluding year, he was vastly unpopular, vilified for calling America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" for its actions in Vietnam, while arguing for redistributing wealth and organizing poor black and white sanitation workers to protestation inequality.

Progressives meant well when mobilizing to honor him, just we ended up settling for a holiday—a symbol—consummate with trite remembrances of a speech he made five years before his assassination.

Which brings us back to all the energy spent protesting the Rizzo statue the last few years. Couldn't it have been channeled into advancing the crusade of social justice for even 1 existent person?

That was the focus of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti this week, when he reallocated $250 million from his urban center'due south budget—including $150 million from the police budget—in straight aid to communities of color. Dissimilarity that to Mayor Kenney'southward revised budget, which adds $23 one thousand thousand in spending to the police, while slashing funding for police oversight, anti-violence, workforce development and economic development programs.

Allow's play Permit's Make a Bargain. I'd gladly accept your display of the Frank Rizzo statue, (maybe with a plaque, putting ol' Frank in his proper historical context), if you lot tell me, in this fourth dimension of grave emergency that, over the next few years, we're going to divert the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by Mayor Kenney's much-cherished soda taxation in order to fund a guaranteed income payment to those amid us who, without intervention, volition spiral into the depths of poverty and despair.

Or, ameliorate yet, that the same revenue will be turned over to the Pennsylvania 30 Day Fund, a consortium of bold-face up-name business organization leaders making forgivable loans to mostly minority-owned businesses, helping to go along them adrift.

That would make for a groundbreaking public/private partnership, in a city whose population is roughly one-half blackness but where just ii.5 percentage of businesses are endemic by African Americans. (Half-dozen percent if you include sole proprietors.)

Addressing that disparity ought to be the outcome of our fourth dimension, and the focus of our energies. If we don't get distracted, if we focus on bodily systemic change, new ideas and strategies of empowerment, we will finally exist saying so long to the ol' okey-doke.

Photo courtesy NBC10 Philadelphia

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Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/frank-rizzo-statue-removal/

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