Editor:

This Wednesday October 9, 2019, the voters in Montgomery, AL, a city where more than half the population is black, known as the birthplace of the civil rights movement, elected an African American, Steven Reed, to the highest position in municipal government for the first time in its 200-year history.

In Richmond Hill, a different type of history has the potential to be made. Chuck Moss (electchuckmoss.com) and David London (facebook.com/davidlondonrh) are currently running for city council positions.

One or both of them could be the first African-American city council members in the history of Richmond Hill.

Both are married, family men and look forward to be the ones to help in the continued growth of our beautiful city. Both have a vision for safe and smart growth that keeps our small town feel. One of the main jobs of local government is to provide security and infrastructure that promotes individual’s rights to life, liberty and happiness.

Part of this means meeting with individual citizens, citizen groups or small organizations like ours.

According to the US Census V2018, African-Americans make up 17.8 percent of the people of color that live here and are the second largest group (that’s both indigenous and transplants). Because of this, it has become obvious that we need much more interconnectivity, interaction and more responsibilities from within the city and also within the businesses here in order to work toward creating a smarter city. Innovation, collaboration, partnerships with their diverse citizens makes cities smarter.

A smarter city is a city which understands that it can provide, by sharing its resources more efficiency, for and to its diverse citizens, to create a higher quality of life in a rapidly changing world.

Local cities or communities that are fighting lack of jobs, some crime, housing/rental placing problems and the changing demographics of its populations of people, use mitigation techniques where people are living together with either and/or (transport, businesses, buildings, governments, academics, local community groups, and churches) and working with each other towards finding solutions.

Remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”

Craig and Sharon Butts

 Unity in the Community