Bev Smith recently hosted a town hall meeting on AURN radio on the topic “The Disappearing Black Community,” so we asked Pittsburghers their views and here is what you said:
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“The Black community needs to reach back to those turbulent times when thousands of Blacks marched and closed down job sites and Nate Smith took control of this city. We need to revolutionize ourselves and make self-sustainability our focus as well as stand strong in our demand for self, family and community…But to accomplish this we need to re-learn how to love/respect and unite our Black community.”
Bonita Lee Penn
Managing editor
Sewickley
“The Black community can be rebuilt by gaining more of a consensus of ourselves and what we need to do for ourselves instead of looking outside and seeing what other people are doing.”
Charles X
Personal trainer
Homewood
“Everybody needs to work together and be a whole and be one, such as helping each other out and stopping all the violence.”
Martel Palmer
Chef
Homewood
“We have to love ourselves and we have to love each other and coincide that with others needs and pull each other up and not tear each other down.”
Chere Leviner
Customer service rep.
Oakland
“We need to start mentoring to young men who are failing in school and don’t know the importance of education and who are having children out of wedlock and we need to teach them that the foundation of our people is the women and we need to treat them a lot better”
English Burton
Community organizer
North Side
“We need to have more of these discussions and not just stop here at this town meeting and then start making things happen such as getting leaders together to improve the public school system, the economics of the Black community, the bus systems and work on whatever else that is effecting the Black community.”
Darcel Madkins
Executive director
Penn Hills
(Photos by J.L. Martello. Compiled by J.L. Martello.)
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