The Logic of Men With Power

An Open Letter to Miami Gardens Mayor Shirley Gibson:

A quiet but cheerful young man named Daniel Barjon graced one of my American Government/Economics classes at Miami Carol City High School last year. Daniel’s younger brother Myckenley “Mike” Barjon was gunned down in front of the family’s Miami Gardens home this school year just before Christmas.

Between this year and last, Daniel has survived the violent deaths of his brother, classmates Evan Page, Sherika Wilson Lynch, Jeffrey Johnson, Jr., and James “JT” Anderson, the 16-year-old son of our school’s media specialist. These dead children are among 30 young lives violently extinguished in Miami-Dade County in the past 18 months. As far back as February 1968 the Kerner Commission reported that, “Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black and one white—separate and unequal.” That may help explain why all the victims have been young people of color. But they shared one other thing to explain why they are now gone. All of them were powerless.

The latest casualty was just like the rest. In his too short life Mike Barjon was buffeted by forces he could not even comprehend. The last of those forces were rounds from an assault rifle in the hands of another young man. Mike’s death will set off another agonized search for cause among the people who care about these children. Meanwhile men with power and their accomplices will again suggest we blame the children themselves, or their parents, or that we all accept a share of the blame. They know well that when you blame everybody, you really blame no one and the status quo is preserved. To clear away that smoke is to see that men with power set in motion the forces that killed Mike and they are responsible, if not yet arrested, for his death.

As Malcolm X used to point out, men with power have always seen to it that liquor stores and drug dens are ubiquitous in certain communities. Forty years after Malcolm’s assassination the despised and dispossessed are also being plied with firearms. The selling of weapons is quite a profitable enterprise so men with power allowed the governmental ban on the sale of assault weapons to lapse on September 13, 2004. Now with the river of guns and dope flowing freely into communities like Miami Gardens, men with power need only create a culture that glorifies their trade in these items.

Twenty years ago a young man named William Roberts graduated from Carol City High. The conventional wisdom among the students today is that Roberts a.k.a. “Rick Ross” is a success story. After all he reportedly puts on a different pair of new shoes every day of the year, he wears a $200,000 wristwatch, and drives a Benz and a Hummer with a “pro paint job n----a you just can’t rob.” Recite his signature lyric in the classroom, “Every day I’m hustlin’” and students’ faces light up. Meanwhile, the stories of Nat Turner or Rosa Parks, the names Paul Robeson or Wynton Marsalis elicit blank stares from the same audience.

William Robert’s stage name Rick Ross is homage to one of the biggest publicly identified drug dealers in US history, “Freeway” Ricky Ross. The Rick Ross persona fronts for, glorifies and glamorizes drug trafficking, gangsterism, pimping, materialism, misogyny, hedonism, and gun violence. But for whatever influence Rick Ross may have, the human casualties are rightfully laid at the doorstep of The Universal Music Group (UMG) and its parent conglomerate Vivendi Universal. The Universal Music Group describes itself as “leading the music industry in global sales….” Vivendi created Rick Ross in their boardroom and they profit most from his work.

When men with power decided to encourage young people to put material wealth above even life itself they used Curtis “50 cent” Jackson among others to deliver the message. Vivendi Universal and fellow media behemoth Viacom Corporation saw to the production, distribution and marketing of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ in all its incarnations. The direction that men with power are taking young people is revealed by the changes made since Viacom purchased B.E.T. from its African-American founder Robert L. Johnson for $1.44 billion in stock. Out with B.E.T. Nightly News and even a brief glimpse of real world events between the fantasy videos. In with American Gangster and a decidedly sympathetic “look at the life and times of notorious Black criminals.” After a perfunctory dose of gospel on Sundays, the men now in charge of B.E.T. promote their true religious affiliation to the Church of the Almighty Dollar the rest of the week.

Coincidentally, Mike Barjon’s death occurred in the last week of a powerful man’s term in office. That day in fact, stung by criticism that the Florida Department of Children & Families has failed to properly care for the mentally ill, Gov. Jeb Bush said, “If the governor took the wish list of every department in the executive branch and added it up, our budget would be $150 billion (double its present size). Part of being a leader is to prioritize.”

In 1995 a single tree infected with canker disease was discovered in Miami. One tree! Men with power responded with a full frontal assault on this threat to the citrus industry.  Over the next ten years the state and federal governments spent $875 million in a program to cut down any tree within 1900 feet of an infected tree. Before Hurricane Wilma finally defeated the Citrus Canker Eradication Program in 2005 over 10 million trees had been removed and citrus growers had pocketed about $500 million. Homeowners whose trees were destroyed were compensated with a Wal-Mart voucher for new plant products. For men with power, one hand washes the other.

By the Spring of 2006 the deaths of so many young people in South Florida was being talked about as a crisis and wildfires were burning several thousand acres of brush and woodlands, destroying three homes and briefly shutting down traffic and commerce on some highways. Gov. Bush declared a state of emergency and called up the Florida National Guard to deal with the wildfires and pushed a measure through the Florida Legislature that earmarked $182,751 to form and staff a study group called the “Council on the Social Status of African-American Men and Boys.” So, as it turns out, Gov. Bush was close. A man in his position has the power to prioritize. A leader creates a safe and healthy place for children to live and learn.

Gov. Bush’s legacy includes an accountability measure for Florida’s young people who do not enjoy the privileges of private schooling. Brilliant little Sherdavia Jenkins measured best in her school just before she died. Jeffrey Johnson, Jr. breezed past the test on his way to a full scholarship to St. Thomas University. Jeffrey’s sister is forced to use the scholarship in the wake of his death.

It turned out to be another act of futility but Mike Barjon took the FCAT a few weeks ago thinking he was going to live beyond high school. In the memory of Mike and all the fallen children the time has come to demand an accountability measure of men with power in return for our cooperation. Newly elected Gov. Crist, you will begin using your great political power to make our schools and the communities around them measurably safer or we will not allow our children and students to take the FCAT. Corporate giant Wal-Mart and your two new Miami Gardens’ stores, you will begin using your great economic power to make Miami Gardens measurably safer or we will shop elsewhere.

Paul A. Moore
Teacher, Miami Carol City High School

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Eleven Steps To Marching On A New Path

Letter To The Editor

Arva Moore Parks, one of South Florida’s most well respected historians reminds us that Miami’s history is the story of Boom and Bust.  Her book Marching With The Drums describes the Boom of the 1920s and its eventual Bust. “The band with a big base drum marches on like crazy Boom, Boom, Boom and then someone blows the whistle and the marching stops. After a while—usually 20 years or so—the marching resumes and off we go again Boom, Boom, Boom.”

We marched in the mid 1970s and then that whistle was blown. We marched for the past five years and we heard that confounded whistle blowing again last year. Perhaps it is time that we marched to a different tune, a different drummer or a different band leader.

Even with a real-estate boom for the past several years the city of Miami has maintained its dismal title as the “Third Poorest City In The U.S.A.”  What may we expect now that the building boom has slowed down and we are left with a glut of thousands of new condo and residential homes that will take 2 to 3 years for the market to absorb?

If our city government can’t get the job done properly in prosperous good times then we are all in store for some real belt tightening now. 

Here are some of the solutions that need to be implemented ASAP:

1. We must learn to live within our budget.

2. Reduce as many expenses as possible.

3. Reduce all elected officials salaries and pensions by 50% to 75% since it is an honor to serve our community. This is not, a job, a career move or a retirement plan.

4. Reduce all senior staff salaries and pension funds by at least 25%. There is no justification for our city attorney or city manager to make $300K with perks, expenses and an overly generous pension plan.

5. Work with the city service providers such as police department and fire department to provide them with a fair salary and retirement fund that does not put a strain on our economy.

6. Provide the same maximum 3% increase on all properties even if they are not protected by homestead exemption.

7. Raise the homestead exemption credit from $25K to $50K or better yet $75K.

8. Implement a moratorium on new building permits until we figure out how Miami 21 will benefit our city and how long it will take to absorb the glut of recently built housing units and the many that are still in the pipeline already permitted and being built.

9. Implement intelligent urban planning that will only change neighborhood zoning when the neighborhood agrees to do so. There must not continue to be patchwork zoning every time a powerful developer that hires Greenburg Trauig after buying a property and too easily convinces their city officials pals to permit them to up-zone, provide variances or special permits.

10. We must implement better ways to take care of our most needy, disenfranchised citizens.

11. We must implement better ways to prevent the continued economic hemorrhaging of our middle-class and their exodus from our community due to high property taxes, high property and auto insurance and the lowering of our quality of life.

Economic prosperity and real-estate booms are cyclical. So we must do a much better job of planning our city’s future then we have done in the recent past. Spending more and building more are not the only answers. Budgeting smart and building smart are two of the best answers.

Isn’t it time that we marched to the beat of a different drummer?

Harry Emilio Gottlieb
Miami