When You Screw Up, Reinvent Yourself?

My Daddy was a nobody but little did I know how much he was loved until his funeral a few years ago. So often we hear of elderly people who die and almost no one attends their funeral but that wasn't the case with Daddy's funeral. When Daddy passed it was standing room only in a big church in East Greensboro and the miles long funeral procession required escorts by not only the Greensboro Police Department but also by the North Carolina Highway Patrol.

The fact that Daddy was so popular long remained a mystery to me. He wasn't any sort of local celebrity, never owned a business, served in 2 wars (WW2 and Korea) but wasn't a war hero, was never in the media and never had money to donate to worthy causes. Not that he wouldn't have done so if he could have but having started out as a share cropper in the mountains of North Carolina, my Daddy never really made it that far in life. Daddy never even had a pension.

But Daddy was always daddy-- he never pretended to be anything he wasn't. When he screwed up he admitted he screwed up and even when he made bad choices he made them in good faith. Daddy never reinvented himself so everyone who met him from his childhood in the 1930s until his death a few years ago always knew who he was all those years later.

Such isn't the case with the folks who secretly run Greensboro. Not only do they reinvent themselves so that we don't know who they are but they also change their names and use multiple names that confuse us and keep us wondering who they are.

Take The Greensboro Partnership for example: The Greensboro Partnership is also known as Action Greensboro, The Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, Downtown Greensboro Incorporated, the Greensboro Economic Development Alliance, the Greensboro Chamber Of Commerce, Greensboro Merchant Association, the Greensboro Credit Union, the Guilford Merchants Association, the High Point Merchants Association. the Greater Greensboro Merchants Association, Joseph M Bryan Foundation, the Greensboro Foundation and more depending on what it is they're trying to do and what day they're doing it. Oh sure, on paper most have separate legal status but in board make ups and deed they operate as one entity. Others operate without any legal status whatsoever.

It's almost as if a new entity is invented for every new project and when an entity soils its name they create a new entity with a different name to replace it while keeping the same boards and management as before.

I guess this is legal. I haven't found any laws stating otherwise. But it is detrimental to Greensboro because we-the-taxpayers feel we have the right to know who it is that runs our city. And if we don't know who is in charge then we cannot trust that our city is being run properly.

This incestuous relationship needs to be of concern to everyone in Greensboro including the "non profits" who run our city and drive our local politics. Will it be addressed? I don't know but until it is addressed you will never have the confidence and trust of Greensboro's working class. And believe me when I tell you that as long as we don't trust you we will always resist anything you try to do, good, bad or ugly.

Oh sure, lots of people will attend your funerals but it won't be because of who you were. That's a right reserved for those who are always who they are.

Update: A friend read this post a few minutes ago and said it was very damning. That wasn't my intention. My intention was to wake up Greensboro's leaders to the fact that you are going to have to do differently if you expect the rest of us to support your efforts.

Continue to page 41. Tannenbaum Sternberger Foundation.