Jax Council candidate forum covers Northside issues

There’s a City Council candidate forum every day in Jacksonville lately, and Saturday’s forum d’jour, held by black empowerment group the Kemetic Empire at Edward Waters College, featured questions and candor that likely will not be heard at many other candidate forums in this election season. Moderated by the iconoclastic local journalist Shelton Hull, the event featured questions and pacing that seemingly threw every candidate for a loop at one point or another in the evening.

The five candidate panel consisted of two candidates from At Large Group 5, Sam Newby and Michelle Tappouni, as well as two District 8 hopefuls (James Breaker and Lynn Sherman) and Glorious Johnson, running in District 9. A unique forum composition that, in the words of Hull, was not happenstance.

“This is a big area, encompassing much of the Northside,” said Hull, who referenced “big names” like Warren Jones and Denise Lee who have had generations of impact representing these once-thriving areas that are still struggling to regain their footing after decades of neglect and worse from all levels of government.

These issues were at the fore throughout the afternoon, even during the candidate introductions, when Lynn Sherman talked about growing up in “some of the worst areas of the city”, and how she came to recognize a “city at the tipping point” that needs “fresh, new leadership” with issues such as crime, the Pension issue, and river dredging.

Glorious Johnson, by way of introduction, stirred the crowd, talking of how “the house I live in over here is 83 years old and this community is my life.”

“I remember when our district was so vibrant. We had so much and it was beautiful. Grocery stores, stores that hired from the community… When you take resources, you leave a desert. There’s no grocery store now. There’s contamination. We have people begging for opportunities” and “we’re just too quiet. We just go along to get along.”

“We lost Mixon Town, lost LaVilla, and we’re losing Brooklyn,” she said, referencing historic African-American neighborhoods. “When the other people get together [to effect political change], they don’t play. It takes a community.”

“Our village raised us. Now we don’t know who’s in the village because they’re all dying or selling drugs,” continued Johnson, who added a note of urgency.

“I’m not playing. This is my last hurrah. I want this community returned to the vibrant place that it used to be,” she said.

The discussion turned soon thereafter to gentrification. Again, Johnson carried the day.

“What has happened in LaVilla and Brooklyn is gentrification. Many of the original people have been displaced — zoned out,” she said.

Turning from that to educational issues, Lynn Sherman had an interesting response regarding a known fact: a huge determinant of educational success for children comes down to the reinforcement at home. She proposed that the schools “expand what is happening at home. We can not leave it up to parents. Don’t let kids fall between cracks.”

From there, the discussion turned its way to a persistent problem in this area of town: how to reduce the perception that the Northwest Quadrant is crime ridden.

James Breaker opined that “we as a community are going to have to take ownership” with kids and young adults. Sam Newby, meanwhile, observed that “I don’t see no media” at “great events like this.” However, if there is a “block party” with crimes and shootings, the media will show up to cover the carnage.

Similar candor was to be found during a discussion of the minority contractor program, which Breaker dismissed as “a joke. It’s not reaching 30%” — the number that statute requires. “It’s not even 1%,” he added.

Glorious Johnson concurred. “The city is not in compliance. That won’t change until a group of us say we’ve had enough and we won’t take it anymore.”

When asked what their primary goal would be for the next four years, if elected, the candidates sounded the alarm on the area’s existential issues.

Johnson asserted that “corporations give money to agencies,” she said, but nothing is done to help those who need it. “We need grocery stores, banks, more businesses. We’re suffering from inequality. I want people to stop lying to us about what they’re doing.”

Lynn Sherman spoke along a similar theme, pledging to “do all I can to eliminate poverty from our community.”

“We need to stop waiting for people to come in and save us,” she added.

Sam Newby pledged, if elected, to address the endemic violence of the area. “I’m tired of watching the news,” he said, wondering if his son or grandson got caught in a hail of bullets. “For the city to be great, the city’s got to be safe,” he added.

At the same time, he recognizes a reality. “I feared the police until I was 40 years old,” he said.

To which Hull, who grew up within walking distance to EWC, replied, “I’m 37 and I still fear them.”

The discussion turned to the “dirty and nasty” Juvenile Detention Center, and how to keep kids out of it. Sam Newby observed that “civil citations need to be proactive, not reactive,” but discussed a community that had changed since he was coming of age in the 1970s, when the community was full of people who would discipline kids who had gone wrong.

Breaker observed, regarding the juvenile offenders, that “all of these could be our kids” and that they deserve a second chance and better treatment.

The wide-ranging two hour forum addressed a panoply of other issues, but they kept coming back to the unfortunate reality that, even as politicians come and go, the problems remain. As one audience member said, people get elected, and say a year later that the problems are not their responsibility to solve.

For Johnson, this is a real concern. “Don’t you ever sell your people out,” she said. “I’ve belonged to all y’all all my life.”