Dear
Arianrhod I invested over 60,000 in financial lending to nonprofit volunteers with 5-6 groups
trying to save two distressed neighborhoods in Houston from being destroyed by corrupt politics,
because they both had plans to restore their communities through educational development of campuses
that would represent and serve the residents in order to empower them to be self-reliant.
These plans were censored because the Democrat leadership depends on monied interests to get into office. since developers wanted that land, that's where the power and property control shifted, despite well written plans by the residents, including some passed into federal laws
that were part of subgrant agreements on funding. These were sideswiped to take that money
and bypass the residents plans but to benefit those of city and corporate developers competing for control of the properties.
I am hoping current Mayor Sylvestor Turner is different and smart enough to beat this game instead of falling victim to it.
But in the past it cost me about 20 years, including the last 7 working two jobs to pay off the loans on my credit cards, in order to keep the nonprofits going that have served as the lifelines of these communities that political competitors sought to "bleed out" of their own neighborhoods in order to finish taking over. It is nothing short of legalized invisible genocide,
even silenced in the media.
It amazes me to this day that preachers can get in the media and scream about police abuse,
but not invest one dime in saving historic churches built by Freed Slaves in our national landmark district. The media silence is deafening, and I even wrote a short essay about how George Zimmerman should have hidden in Freedmen's Town and the media would have left him alone.
I give credit for the plans to the community leaders who put them together.
I have expanded on their plans and proposed this as a model for restoring and uplifting distressed districts nationwide (through prison reform networks with public radio) and turning prisons and sweatshops into schools using the same "campus model":
http://www.houstonprogressive.org
proposed for replication along the border for immigration reform and restitution for trafficking:
Earned Amnesty
The credit really belongs to the heroes I was trying to support who aren't paid to do the
work saving their communities while millions of taxdollars were going to destruction instead.
But sadly, many of them, including one of the co-authors of the campus concepts
Lenwood Johnson may not see the realization of their life work, because it has gone on for so long and the Black leadership is still too divided politically to unite and demand
reimbursement of the abused funds, in order to invest in their own legacy they could build
in this historic district: see
Freedmen's Town Historic Churches and Vet Housing
Gladys House wrote the Veteran housing and health service plans,
that have gone unfunded despite budget planning and proposals to VA and HUD.
Why? Because she is a Black Female Republican business leader and conflicts
with Sheila Jackson Lee and other Democrat leaders who want the credit but won't invest the work or the dollars.
While Gladys and I work two jobs each (she might work 3-4 now)
trying to fund plans while everyone else points the finger and plays the blame game.
I've even tried to offer to pay the closing costs to buy the last row of historic houses
for Gladys' vet housing project. But because we're both women, and the men won't
listen to the women but want to be in charge, nothing is getting done.
We need male leadership to get this going, but they are divided and falling victim to politics.
At this point, I even blame the gender divide more than the racism that is part of
Freedmen's Town history, built on segregation.
The issue turning the local men leaders against Gladys is so bad,
I even gave up and don't know how to help overcome this.
I've reached out to ministers and found an academic link that looks hopeful,
but working two jobs to pay the debts this already cost me is killing me.
so it's taking forever, and I wish more able adept leaders would step in and
take this over and help Gladys, Lenwood and the other resident leaders
to develop their campus plans as a model for the nation that I think would
solve the problems that both Occupy and BLM has brought up with the lack of Black ownership.
The solutions are there, and it's a matter of uniting the Black leadership around them.
I'm Asian American and trying to help the Vietnamese landowners sell those
last houses to a nonprofit that can fulfill Gladys vet housing plans.
The communities and leadership are divided over this left/right rich/poor
political infighting that detracts attention and resources from solutions to the problems.
so that's why it's taken so long and has exhausted everything we tried to invest
to buy time until these plans can finally be recognized and promoted nationally.
Even Sheila Jackson Lee signed the original campus development plans,
and no funding has followed up because the Mayors gave tax money to
developers to strip the neighborhood, seize and destroy national historic
property and landmarks. So politics has been killing us, inside and out.
That is why I am so opposed to political bullying and division which I blame
for wasting resources that could have gone into saving not just one but
two national historic landmarks in Houston: Freedmen's Town and the Astrodome.
Our past Mayor Annise Parker would rather spend tax dollars and also
millions in campaigning to fight for the bathroom issue while letting
a national historic site go without funding to buy houses for Vets to
set up sustainable jobs and financial education in business management.
Very sad. Maybe it's someone else's story to finish telling, as it was
going on before I got there. But I do believe the future solutions to
all the past conflicts and grievances with the history of slavery
and ownership can be solved by applying the campus model out of
Freedmen's Town as a system of investing restitution back into community development.
That plan speaks for itself, and it came from a cumulative process combining
the work of many groups together that all have part of the plan.
My job was just to support the people in putting it together,
but it will take networking across party lines and investing resources
in building up instead of billions wasted campaigning by party to tear
each other down.
And I'm not sure which people are ready to lead solutions that
rise above this ongoing trend of both sides blaming the other,
for political points in the media, while nothing is getting done
and no resources are going to people really doing the work and developing
working plans.
