Durkan said she has met with community leaders, local organizations, protesters, businesses and residents in recent weeks, and there will be continued dialogue on how to reimagine policing itself as well as "every other component of our society."
"Racism is a living, breathing organism," she said. "It permeates our society in so many ways, and we can only undo racism and begin to undo the trauma and injustice by really centering the voices of the people who are affected."I had a pretty good dose yesterday, too, in a county commissioners meeting in which an inordinate amount of time was spent discussing subcommittees and action plans devoted to the mystery of what they like to call "entrepreneurship incubation."
These people wouldn't know a business plan if it ate them for breakfast. They've heard of a business start-up before, and they think that something must stand between a stalwart would-be local "home-grown" business entrepreneur and fabulous success, followed by buying a home, raising a family, and paying a lot of local taxes. They gather that what most such hopeful young idealists lack is something called "cash," a/k/a what bloodsucking capitalists call capital. They aren't in a position to give startups any cash, because sadly the local tax structure is such that an Economic Development sales tax slot was previously eaten by some other sales tax, and they've hit the ceiling on that. They know ad valorem tax abatements probably won't fly. What to do?
They're going down the usual road: appoint sub-committees to chase grants for business incubation. I must say, they have an extremely firm grip on where the grant money is and how to advance relentlessly toward putting their hands on it: talk about community needs and workforce development and leveraging strengths and light, clean industry and diversification and resilience. What they don't seem to understand is that an entrepreneur has a product to sell, to people who want it and have money to spare from other wants to spend on it, and a business plan for how to finance production and sales until he can turn a "profit" (eek), plus an iron determination to work himself half to death pulling the whole thing off.
When real people with capital to invest see a structure like this, they sometimes write checks in return for a share of the potential future profits. It's called capital. The county doesn't have any, and neither do any of the sub-committees. They're not even going to grab the grant money and use it as capital; all the money will go for studies and salaries of indispensable chairmen and directors to study business incubation.
But at least they didn't spend the meeting talking about centering voices and having continued dialogue on how to reimagine business incubation and every other aspect of our society.
