Reinvigorated Miami-Dade agency committed to economic equity for Black residents | Opinion

Many of us are guided by someone or something.

During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, for instance, Martin Luther King, Jr. was guided by Gandhi’s message of nonviolence. He was introduced to this method of resistance by theologian Howard Thurman.

Thurman was many things to King: a classmate of King’s father at Morehouse and, later, King’s instructor at Marsh Chapel at Boston University, while the young man was pursuing his advanced theology degree.

Thurman also was a student of Gandhi and responsible for introducing King to nonviolence resistance. Thurman built one of the very first non-denominational churches that invited all races to worship together. I like to say that he was the architect of spiritual consciousness over religion.

Today, I am guided by the need for the Miami-Dade Economic Advocacy Trust to return in its rightful place.

The Trust is going through a period of enlightenment and change. We were created out of the awful McDuffie riots more than 40 years ago that burned in Miami for many days. This agency was created to build a bridge between the Black community and the larger white and Hispanic communities.

Our mission remains ensuring the equitable participation of Blacks in Miami-Dade County’s growth through advocacy and by monitoring the county’s economic development initiatives. We were guided by superb county commissioners back then. They sought to strike a balance so that the Black community would feel not only included, but also would have a measuring stick that would ensure it.

Somehow, though, this agency lost its way, and Miami-Dade took off like a rocket, leaving high Black unemployment, modest housing and a shrinking Black middle class. However, this is not to be the case with the reinvigorated Miami-Dade Economic Advocacy Trust.

We have county commissioners and a mayor who embrace the change that we are undergoing. We are expanding our staff by building a strong team of people that will analyze and provide solutions in youth services, housing, construction development and economic empowerment. We will develop solutions, ask county leadership for help and move forward with real plans and the budgeted dollars to make Greater Miami more inclusive.

While ours is a lofty goal, we feel like Thurman in that we don’t want the credit — we just want to advise the leadership in regards to what we will learn. Then we will implement next-level, high-end solutions, so that all of Miami-Dade County will rise because the last boat — Black Miami — will finally be docked at the port in an equitable way.

This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 3:17 PM.