In a small room nestled in the back of Friendly City Books on Saturday, a group of Columbus citizens put their heads together to create a vision for the city in the form of a comic strip on a sheet of cardstock.
At the New Black City event, leader Shari Davis gave about 20 participants the space to imagine what an ideal Columbus would look like and the steps that they could take to get there. Davis is co-executive director for the nonprofit Participatory Budgeting Project and a TEDx speaker.
Ideas large and small, short term and long term, were shared and considered. Attendees imagined their dream Columbus as one free of racial divisions, one beautified by the renovation of private and commercial properties and one with ample opportunities to nurture and enhance the lives of the youth. Chiefly, they sought one where the community was directly involved in the governmental processes that impact them the most.
“People have identified the problems that impact our community, but now, everybody’s also getting to look at what solutions there are,” Columbus resident Malcolm Carstafhnur said. “People have shown that they’re willing to come together.”
New Black City is a nationwide tour of workshops that aims to encourage cities to reimagine themselves, particularly with respect to designing a system of local government that more directly involves its citizens and includes more voices from its marginalized populations, such as African Americans. It also focuses on participatory budgeting, a process that engages residents more directly in working with elected officials to generate ideas, develop proposals and vote on how to invest in their communities.
The comic strip is meant to represent the culmination of the participants’ shared vision.
Some of the group’s goals for an ideal Columbus were more attainable than others. They discussed turning the abandoned K-Mart into a Target, opening an Italian restaurant, revitalizing Seventh Avenue North and reviving the Queen City Hotel, which used to be the center of African American business in Columbus.
Carstafhnur, for his part, said he supports stronger youth programs as well as a “lottery” to select a group of citizens to assemble for participatory budgeting.
“(I support) using a lottery to register people for civil services, and have them become part of a participatory budgeting committee with a government stipend as an incentive,” he said.
Mayor Keith Gaskin and Ward 5 Councilman Stephen Jones both participated in the workshop.
Gaskin told The Dispatch afterward that he felt it was just the type of event the city needs.
I wish that we had had an even bigger audience than we did, but we had a lot of great minds here today,” he said. “We were talking about things that I think we need to put emphasis on in this city. And that’s coming together as much as we can. We don’t want to be a city that’s divided … and I think programs like this help stimulate great conversation and great ideas about how to make our city better.”
Jones agreed, adding he would like to see all the shared ideas implemented, including participatory budgeting.
“I enjoyed it. I thought it was very interactive,” Jones said. “And it was good for learning too, as an elected official. They brought some insight into things being done in other places and ideas that might help the community.
“I know it takes a lot of people, money and a lot of work,” he added. “And things have to all line up to make some of it happen, but I thought all of it was good ideas.”
Many at the event stressed the need for opportunities for the youth to be involved in city government. Gaskin mentioned bringing back the Mayor’s Youth Council, a public service program for high school students that was temporarily stopped during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we’re hoping to do is set the Mayor’s Youth Council up in the fall and to set it up in a way that the members of the council are actually interacting with our community leaders and our council members,” Gaskin said. “So many times, as elected officials and folks, we kind of stay in our own pods of people and we don’t listen to the youth as much as we should. So we want to have them actually working on ideas and listening to the council to show them that they can have an impact in their local government.”
Chuck Yarborough, a history instructor at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science who helped coordinate the Columbus workshop, was part of the group that focused on eliminating divisions.
“I consistently heard people wanting there to be less division in Columbus — wanting there to be more conversation about shared goals and to have a broader number of people participate in shaping our community in positive ways,” he said. “Everybody here has some things they love about this community, and everyone who has something they love, has some things they would say we need to improve. I think discussions like we had today help us move in that direction.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 44 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
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