WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?
The Perkins Administration
3-5-07
Thousands of visitors and many former residents were in Selma this past weekend. WHAT DID THEY SEE IN OUR CITY WHERE JAMES PERKINS, JR HAS NOW BEEN MAYOR FOR SIX YEARS?
Here is what visitors said AND WERE QUOTED as saying in a major STATE newspaper:
1. Tattered curtains blowing in the shattered window of an abandoned house on Martin Luther King, Jr Street and businesses with iron bars across their doors greeted Johnson who came back with his son to celebrate the march he participated in as a teenager.
2. "Selma looked a whole lot better when I was growing up than it does now" said 42 year old Jerome Rush. "I mean, look around you". . . . "Loss of jobs and increased crime have contributed to the boarded windows, vacant lots, and debris scattered on the sidewalks", he said.
3. Downtown "don't look like it used to," said RESIDENT Alice Peterson, calling the area "dead". . . Any new businesses struggle to stay open, she said. . . "The thing is, this is just not a place for young people that are trying to make a better life for themselves ... Not a place for young people coming up in the world," Peterson said.
We were sad to see these comments about Selma published throughout the State, but unfortunately they are al true. After six years of rule by the Perkins Administration, Selma is worse off in every way than it was before Perkins became Mayor. There is a sense of hopelessness and malaise which grips the community. Whites are moving ot of the City in record numbers or talking about moving out of the city, while blacks seem trapped by crime, no jobs or loss of jobs, deteriorating neighborhoods, fear, and an ncertainty about the future.
Each time Perkins talks about Selma, the City is "on the verge" or "just about to" or "prepared to" either grow, expand, or prosper. BUT after six years, we are worse off then we were before, and as one visitor said, "Selma looked a whole lot better when I was growing up."
As long as Perkins, Crenshaw, and Leashore are in control, they will get richer at the taxpayers expense while the rest of the people, black and white, suffer!
