WUKELA.US - Wukela For Mayor

Downtown

There is a wall through the middle of Florence that divides us.

It is a wall of ignorance and fear, a wall of greed and mistrust.
A wall that divides rich from poor, black from white, north-side from south-side.

That wall runs thorough our center, our downtown. It is a downtown which has been left to rot and decay, paid only lip-service by our leadership, and serving only as a haven for drugs and gangs.

For all of the current administration’s talk of downtown revitalization over the last thirteen years, a short walk down Evans and Dargan streets North of Palmetto will reveal that nothing has been done downtown.

In fact, no project has been built North of Palmetto.

A prime example is the junk-yard bounded by Lucas, Irby, Dargan, and Darlington Streets. Its purchase was negotiated by the City beginning in 1999. The administration has, on frequent occasions, hailed its development as central to downtown redevelopment. Yet it still stands vacant.

Meanwhile millions of dollars are spent building impressive projects South of Palmetto; including a Four Million Dollar veteran’s park just announced behind the Civic Center in West Florence.

Further, neighborhoods in North and East Florence suffer while their storm sewers back up into the streets, their roads deteriorate, and absentee landlords collect rents on decrepit buildings, havens for drugs and gangs.

The call for change is a call to unite this City divided against itself. A call to tear down that wall that runs through downtown.

To develop not just an adequate standard of living, but an excellent standard of living, for everyone.

To give all of our children an opportunity to develop all of their skills, all of their promise, all their abilities, safely, together.

To share prosperity, to spread hope.

There are powerful forces that would not have it so.

Selfishness and greed would divide and chain us; leaving us prisoners of our own pessimism
and doubt.

But we can unite this City divided against itself.

We can tear down this wall that divides us and commit it to the dustbin of history.

We can build a city; We must not fail to try.