Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ We were very heartened to witness the Salisbury community coming together last night at the Miller Recreation Center in the West End. It was well timed wake-up call for a city in dire need of a comeback. The rec center’s main room was packed to standing room overflow. The organizers: the Chamber, West End Pride Organization, and the West End Community Organization struck a vital chord in a city under siege from gang violence, crime, drugs, and in the background city hall corruption, a much discussed sidebar conversation after the meeting ended.
Last evening’s presentation was just the opening round of a series focused on finding solutions to a city under siege. The Chamber’s community organizers Kenny Hardin, Rev. Anthony Smith, Chris Sifford, Dee Dee Wright, and consultant Alex Clark worked hard behind the scenes to pull together this gathering that went beyond the West End Community.
The entire riveting program, videoed in full by the RFP, will be posted Friday morning on the Rowan Free Press. We hope readers will vicariously join one of the most compelling events to take place in Salisbury in quite a few years. We’re hoping this is the start of a city in need of turnaround and much needed solutions.
When Salisbury’s communities came together and engaged, it was a virtual who’s who in the City. Our friend William Peoples was there and spoke up. West End Community Organization President Fannie Butler, West End Pride President Shirley McLaughlin, Livingstone President Jimmie Jenkins, the school board’s Kay Wright Norman, and Mary James of the West Square Neighbors all of whom entered in the conversation at various points. Quiet in the background, but not unnoticed, were most of Salisbury’s city council, Sheriff Auten, the Chief of Police Rory Collins, County Commissioner Mike Caskey, and several county commission candidates: Chris Cohen, Greg Edds, and Judy Klusman.
The two hour meeting recognized the need for all the communities to come together to stop crime and violence in the neighborhoods that is putting many city dwellers on edge. The West End, suffering from a disproportionate amount of gang shootings and break-ins since the start of the year, wants answers. They feel strongly they are not getting them from the understaffed Salisbury Police Department said to have somewhere between 65 and 70 officers and very few patrol cars on the street. The Police Department’s deployment of a part-time twice a week substation in the West End was universally viewed as more meaningless show by West Enders and a sign of major disconnect with city hall.
“We need regular patrol down here,” said William Peoples, a supporter of much needed street lights in the West End that never arrived in this year’s city budget.
Kenny Hardin said, “We don’t need a substation. No one in our community was asked if that’s a viable option. The city needs to take away that ‘we’ need to be involved in the process.”
On Wednesday the message was clear at Miller Recreation Center: all the communities affected best join together. It’s their responsibility, not City Hall’s or the Police Department. The meeting’s organizers requested that residents fill out a multi-question survey. The plan is take the survey’s top three priorities to City Hall to begin working on solutions. The focus of the open forum was to elicit community discussion and listen to what residents from all over the city had to say.
Talk ranged from the importance of education, after school programs, the role of churches, and the need for young people to have something to do and places to go. Talk of gangs dominated many of the conversations and what were viable alternatives to them. Quite noticeably, not many under 25s were present.
One of the evening’s shining lights, Master Trooper Clee Atkinson Jr., from Rocky Mount wowed the gathering with a heartfelt and inspiring sermon on solutions to gang violence and drug challenges found universally in cities. With the aid of video clips and interactions with the crowded rec center, Atikinson colorfully hammered home the need for youth outreach and providing alternatives to gangs. Repeatedly Atkinson spoke of parents needing to parent.
“Education–I’m a big proponent of it,” said Atkinson. “Education is the key to solving many problems. We need to integrate anti-bullying and gang intervention in our schools. Heroin, meth, and other drugs are infiltrating our neighborhoods.”
Alex Clark, a former drug dealer from Salisbury who spent 18 years in a Federal Prison, told the audience how he utilized his time gaining an education. He stressed how bad choices got him selling drugs and landed him in prison where he missed out on his children’s lives and wasn’t there for the death of a son. “We glamorize the game, but it’s no game. We’re dealing people’s lives. I hope by telling my story it will prevent someone else from following the same path.”
