The Rhino calls International Civil Rights Center & Museum board Chairman Deena Hayes-Greene’s response to the city’s questions about the museum’s finances “unresponsive,” “vague” and –last but not least —“incomprehensible.”
With that in mind, check out Hayes-Greene’s N&R op-ed:
How badly we need this museum, this monument to the struggles of oppressed people and their allies, the victories of oppressed people and their allies. It is the legacy from those who labored in that struggle, the lifetimes spent so we might begin opening doors so long locked.
How do we take up the banner of that struggle if we don’t know of it? How do we explain the racial profiling, mass incarceration, disproportionate minority contact in law enforcement and the judicial system, health disparity, economic exploitation, an educational achievement gap of today if we do not know the history that gave them to us? For the museum not only celebrates the victories of a struggle that is ongoing, it inspires us today by saying, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Pretty heavy list of grievances in the age of Obama. I finally got what Hayes-Greene was trying to say on the third read, although I’m still trying to figure out who’s giving whom what in that passage.
The way I see it we know why Gboro needs the museum; right now the focus needs to be on how to keep it. Problem is a $1.5 million loan from the city is a drop in the bucket considering the museum’s massive debt. Once the city gets involved –it already is— the museum could be a financial strain for eternity.
The Rhino adds the “City Council is surprised to find itself dealing with Hayes-Greene.” Hope to get used to it; Hayes-Greene never shied from controversy over at the Guilford County Board of Education. While nobody really pays attention to the school board, but a lot of people are paying attention to this issue.
