Dear Ward 8, We need to go on a crab-free diet.

[Congress Heights On The Rise Community Connection]

From today's blog post:

Today is a day that The Advoc8te needs to take a moment and engage in
some real talk. Be forewarned, The Advoc8te is about to lay down some
serious heat and some folks may get their feelings hurt, but it’s high
time that someone says it, and I guess today that person will have to
be me.

As a person of color living in a predominantly black community, it is
my opinion that we really have to stop this 'crab in a pot' mentality.
To be fair, you don’t have to be black to engage in ‘crab in a pot’
behavior but as a people who have historically been marginalized and
disenfranchised we probably understand it the most. In terms of this
behavior in Ward 8, we are cutting off our own noses to spite our
faces. We have gone from ‘we are the change that we seek’, to ‘yes we
did it!’ to ‘every man for himself’. What the hell happened to “we are
all in this together”?

To be fair, there have been some success stories. I see them every
day; however, we still have some humungous super-duper ‘hater crabs’
in our community and they are sipping on a Super Big Gulp of
"Haterade". This is what keeps our community fractured, obstructionist
intent on keeping us fighting amongst ourselves rather than working
together. Weather you call them ‘haters’ or refer to them as ‘crabs in
a pot’ we have way too many in Ward 8 (and East of the River/River
East in general) and they are killing any sense of unity and progress
with their self-defeatist attitudes and actions. As a two year
resident of Ward 8 I have been stunned by the level of ‘crab-like’
behavior I have seen in so called leaders of the Ward 8 community;
some of these ‘fine upstanding citizens’ have appointed themselves
judge, jury and executioner on everything Ward 8 related. They have
almost made it their primary mission to tear down, discourage,
criticize, or obstruct any attempts or plans for success that were not
created with them at the helm. It’s petty...it’s foolish... and it's
just plain selfish.

I understand what it is like to be frustrated with a situation, Lord
knows I really do. I understand what it is like to work really hard at
something for so long and feel like you just aren’t getting ahead -
it’s maddening. I can understand the frustration, especially if it
seems that someone else with less of an obvious investment or
seniority comes in and gets recognition for your hard work. I get
that. It’s only human to feel overlooked, especially if you have
invested time and energy in a project or goal that has been really
dear to your heart. Again, I get that. What I don’t get is sabotaging
the very project you invested so much time, sweat and tears into just
because you are upset that someone else might be making some progress
where you didn't or are receiving attention that you feel you (and
you alone) deserved.

That is my biggest problem with some (but not all) Ward 8 community
activists. There are a small number of community leaders who are so
consumed by their own ego that they can neither solicit nor accept
help. They see any attempts to improve things for everyone as a
personal insult to their ego and/or a threat to their standing in the
community. Change (in any form) that was not pre-approved by them is
to be met with contempt, scorn and rage and that I just don’t
understand. That type of short sighted thinking is not only childish
but counter-productive. There are actually some people in Ward 8
(young and old; new arrivals and old arrivals; black and white) who
hope that the few really positive things we have in the community
fail, because to fail would keep us all together at the bottom on the
pot and will keep us all separated in our pre-assigned seats. You
don't have to get to really know a person if they are just a
stereotype.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Ward 8. I really, really do love Ward 8,
but sometimes navigating through the dysfunction, childishness and
jealousy (that’s right I said it) of community politics is like
watching children fighting over a toy. They would rather break it than
share it.

Anyone who knows The Advoc8te knows I get really upset when I see
attempts in the media to either divide us (ex. old residents vs. new
residents) or assign overly general (and often incorrect) stereotypes
to an entire community. The only thing that makes me even more upset
and causes my blood to boil is when we do it to each other!
Especially, when we verbally eviscerate each other publicly in the
very medium (example, the news) that has historically contributed to
the misconceptions of our community in the first place!

What is this crap of ‘old residents vs. new residents’ or ‘middle
class vs. working class’ or ‘East of the River vs. River East’? It’s
nothing but a diversion; a diversion to keep us busy fighting each
other instead of working together to solve real problems like
homelessness, illiteracy and unemployment. If you live in Ward 8 then
you are my neighbor – it's that simple. It is time to smarten up
people. Stop letting third-parties play our community for fools. Let’s
stop playing to the stereotype. Let’s stop being crabs!

Before Rosa Parks there was Harriet Tubman. Before Martin Luther King
Jr. there was Frederick Douglass. And yes, before The Advoc8te there
was a Mary Cuthbert. Did we see our civil rights leaders stabbing each
other in the back in the press? No - because they were working
TOGETHER for a common goal. There will always be someone older, wiser
and who has suffered more than the next person. Older people don’t
have an exclusive on knowing what’s right; young folks even with all
their technology do not have all the answers either. No one here is
perfect. There is no one right way. True and lasting success is going
to come from a collaboration of a lot of different viewpoints, of a
lot of different skills, of a lot of different ideas. We are all in
this together people! Let’s stop hating on each other and get to the
business at hand! Let’s put some more ‘civil’ back into civil rights!
I’ve said it once and I will say it again, ‘it’s community not
seniority’.

At the end of the day we need each other, every single last one, in
order to make this community GREAT. Let’s stop the back-biting, the
insults, the sabotage, the division, the accusations, the assumptions.
Let’s just stop the hate! All of that is just noise designed to keep
us as a community divided and sitting at the back of the bus.

Now stop being a crab!

Instead of giving your neighbor your contempt consider giving him (or
her) your hand.