As a Black boy raised in my grandmother’s home on the westside of Akron, Ohio, we weren’t regularly talking about political ideologies or radical centrism. I saw no correlation between my mother working 12-hour shifts in hopes of becoming a first-generation homeowner and the City Planning Committee’s approval of a multimillion-dollar market-rate development with a 15-year tax abatement just around the corner. I don’t come from a lineage of public servants nor was I a political science major. My relationship to democracy was a far-fetched idea existing somewhere out there in the ether and, by perception, had no bearing on my future.
Not until I moved to Denver, Colorado and encountered a Black elected official did I learn why and how I might be civically engaged. He spoke to politics being a gray space and argued our Blackness should inform our participation. Discerning my naivety, he challenged me to read W.E.B. Du Bois’ op-ed titled “I Won’t Vote.” In doing so, I discovered Du Bois’ position on voting was not the central theme. Please, please go vote. Du Bois’ position was determined by his relentless effort to understand a nominees’ “attitude toward Negroes,” suggesting he was more than just a vote.
His dogged advocacy for Black people in America steadied his hand at the polls because every ballot has consequences. In a moment of revelation, I too understood my participation in the democratic process determined the material conditions of my life experience – and my community.
All of this was put to the test when I became a community based development practitioner nearly eight years ago. Year in and year out, the “downtrodden” neighborhood I served had one of the lowest turnouts in all of the 50+ voting sites across the city whereas the “affluent” neighborhood across town showed up in droves because of a nominal increase in their property taxes. It was a clear indication that the folks I served, like me, did not see themselves as stewards, forcing me to reckon with my role as a practitioner. Having participated in a number of discussions on how we might empower and encourage resilience amongst neighbors, it became increasingly clear we failed to take inventory of the resident’s veiled potential. Don’t get me wrong, leaning into the “sticks and bricks” of community development is good work. In the words of Majora Carter, “we shouldn’t have to move out of our neighborhood to live in a better one.” But if it’s our intention to create systemic change, we have an obligation to cultivate collective power and demonstrate, by design, government bends to our will.
So where do we go from here? In a world so Martin Luther King-less, we must continuously proclaim from the mountain tops that all power remains with the people, and we have a moral obligation to one another. Moreover, we must recognize one cannot seize power without information. Far too long, the established order has bastardized organizing and political mobilization as integral components of community based development. We as practitioners must fundamentally understand our missional efforts will not safeguard the people we serve from the politics of the day. In the words of Ray Greene, Jr. of The Freedom BLOC, dare we dream of a day where we all see government as the prize.
Curtis Minter, Jr. serves as Senior Fellow, Community of Practice + Convenings of The People’s Practice at ThirdSpace Action Lab. As an Akron native with more than a decade of experience in nonprofit management, he previously served as Operations Director of The Well Community Development Corporation serving the Middlebury neighborhood until 2023.