Ellington

The whole thing about a write-in campaign (...) is just too bizarre for words. I cannot believe a single white person in Jackson (I am from Michigan, have lived in Broadmoor 18 years)—with the possible exception of Charlotte Reeves—believes that any white person can win a mayoral race in this city, on any party ballot or in any way. And that is doubly true for any candidate of any race who doesn't pander to the welfare wards in a city like Jackson.

Personally, I wish Jonathan Lee had chosen to run as an independent against (Chokwe Lumumba) after the primary. It isn't unknown for someone to lose a primary, then run as an independent and beat the primary winner—a current U.S. senator from Alaska did just that. But that is a dead issue.

What we have coming down the pike now is urban disaster, pure and simple. I never thought Harvey (Johnson Jr.) was all that bad, and even in his last term, you can look at all of the numbers and see the city sliding. That will accelerate now with (Lumumba), deepening the decay already encumbering the city—not because the mayor (as you pointed out) can do all that much, but because the mayor symbolizes what direction the city is moving (or not).

I have watched Jackson decay and Broadmoor crumble for more than a decade now. And what makes it even worse is that the same thing has happened, or is happening, with virtually every black-majority neighborhood and school system and city, everywhere in the country, which makes Jackson's chances of side-stepping that disaster virtually zero. No one likes it, and few want to mention it, but reality is pretty damn unforgiving.

Just a pity. I actually heard MLK Jr's "I have a Dream" speech, and thought it was one of the most powerful and moving speeches I had ever heard then, or have heard since then. I look around Jackson (or Detroit, I am from that area), and somehow cannot believe that these outcomes are the dream he envisioned.

—Alan Sabrosky, letter to the editor