I just returned this afternoon from basically two months out of the country and read your editorial in today”s paper with shock.
First, you incorrectly identified me as a “mix” in the candidacy for the District 5 supervisor race. I do not live in District 5 and cannot vote for a candidate in that race. However, I do believe that Mr. McFarland is a better candidate for that job than Mr. Brooks because he does not harbor racial anger and he struggles to work together and unify our community. Secondly, you referred to Kenneth McFarland as “my protégé.” Wrong again, Mr. McFarland is his own person and nobody”s puppet. This is very well illustrated in the project whereby he goes into prison voluntarily and lives with inmates to minister to them and try to help them resolve their problems so that when they are released they will be less likely to repeat a crime or engage in other negative behavior to disturb our community. I have hardly had contact with him about the current supervisor race. My only help has been to positively encourage Mr. McFarland to stay in there regardless of how negative Mr. Brooks will become. I do have frequent contact with him and Reverend Darren Leach who have both done an outstanding job for the community through the old Hughes school. This is a project that I support fully, as it takes up the slack in our community for after-school programs that are very badly needed for students who cannot receive adequate help with their education at home. Maybe you would be more appreciative of the work that is done by Mr. McFarland if you investigated fully what he does for the community. Perhaps it is unfortunate that Mr. McFarland does not go around blowing his own horn about how great he is and how bad other people are. I do however also understand that he has attended most all of the important Board of Supervisor meetings during the last three years and fully understands the major issues of our community.
Thirdly, it is inadequate to describe Mr. Brooks as a “political juggernaut.” That is much too mild. My experience with Mr. Brooks began in the Democratic Party functions, and during the competition for city council between Mr. McFarland and Mr. Karim, where I did actively support Mr. McFarland because I thought, and still believe, that he would have been the better man for the job (recall the scene between Mr. Karim and the mayor).
During that campaign Mr. Brooks ran around telling people, even on the radio, that McFarland was a puppet of mine, that I was a Republican and thus trying to mess up the vote and in short that I was a bad white person trying to take advantage of Democrats by manipulating Mr. McFarland. Regrettably, my experiences with Mr. Brooks has not revealed him as anything else but, simply speaking, an angry bully, and that feeling is also shared by a large number of our African American fellow citizens, who I suspect are afraid to speak out because they would suffer personal attacks against their integrity and credibility. My personal view is that we do not need that sort of mental attitude in our government regardless of who runs against whom.
From your descriptions of Mr. Larson, as described in your editorial he appears to me to have carried his journalistic talents forward and tried to bring into public view the true nature of the character that the public needs to see. Maybe your own newspaper prevented the truth from coming out, and I cannot understand any reason why that might be so.
Fourthly, another misunderstanding I feel that you, and many other white leaders in our community have, is that you fall for the Brooks story line, that he controls the “black vote” in Columbus. Wrong again.
Since I have been back here I have concentrated on getting to know and freely work and associate in the African American community. I have learned that aside from his own personal gain, Mr. Brooks has not done very much that is obvious to me and most of the population in that community. This has been vividly shown in the past because when a candidate with integrity runs against him, Mr. Brooks makes extremely misleading insinuations and personal attacks upon him/her.
Please review your own history about this. In my view, without such personal defamation of his opponents, and the support of your newspaper letting him get away with it, Mr. Brooks would be voted out of office. I also am of the personal view that Mr. Brooks is also aware of this situation, and that is why he demonizes anyone who runs against him. I would hope that you as a journalist would recognize this and get the truth out to your readers in our community who may depend upon your newspaper to give them accurate and unbiased information. Maybe I begin to understand why The Packet has been successful.
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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