How should we respond to the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington, D.C.? Obviously, we remember the moment, but at some point, the past becomes meaningless if it does not inspire one to change the present and future. We spend more than $1 trillion a year, but how we spend that money will be the real story of the next century.
Forgive me for believing that organizing the entire community is my personal obligation. But it’s also the obligation of anyone who cares about the future of this nation.
The plan
As part of that organizing effort, I am one of the founders of (along with Isam Taylor) the Martin Luther King [Jr.] County Institute. King’s vision of his Beloved Community is its foundation.
One of my visions looks like this: The African-American religious community has four main components: Baptist, African Methodist, Church of God in Christ and Church of God. Each of those denominations has numerous churches and members in its group, and each represent an economic organization capable of leveraging a major bank for a $5 million to $10 million economic development loan.
Banks can loan $10 on every dollar deposited in their vaults, and each of these groups and their members have a minimum of $1 million on deposit, of which the banks have been making loans off for a long time.
Each group forms an economic-development corporation and hires an expert to run it. They collectively hire an economic development team to do an economic-impact study to determine what businesses are missing and would be successful throughout the black communities of King County or the greater Puget Sound region. The team would also help train new business owners, develop successful group-advertising strategies and help facilitate an audit that would be done of all of our businesses every 90 days.
We take the area in question (Puget Sound) and divide it into four economic-development zones and each church economic organization is assigned one area to eliminate duplication and unnecessary competition.
The idea is simple: The economic-development team does its research, outlines the businesses that will work in the various economic zones, advertises for partners who want to buy a stake in those businesses (25 percent stays with the corporation; 75 percent goes to investors) and begins with a customer base of 3,000 to 5,000 people. The economic council and all of its churches and members will be customers.
We would begin by purchasing or investing in the struggling strip malls on busy streets in South King County and Seattle and Tacoma suburbs. These malls would be turned into African-American business hubs, with three to five businesses in each hub. The traffic to these hubs would open up other business opportunities for private businesspeople and expand this further.
Ten percent of the total profits are pledged back to the corporation because this system does not require thousands of dollars in advertising or marketing cost. In the future, the corporation will have paid back its initial loan and would be self-sufficient.
These business zones would pledge to help train and hire African-American youths and other disadvantaged people and receive tax credits from the city they operate in.
Each hub could have a restaurant, an entertainment spot, a hair-care-products outlet, a barber or beautician, a store that sells general products, a pool hall and bar, etc. People would eventually open up their own business and get the corporation’s support if it’s something that is needed.
Prosperity ministry
When we embraced the name Martin Luther King [Jr.] County, we embraced the vision of the man as our own. We need to be the leader in the nation on this issue and start that process right here.
Church structures change because they have a farsighted or charismatic leader or a well-grounded and practical congregation. If they have both, they are blessed.
This is a program that must be pushed from the congregations because the younger ministers we have in a lot of our churches would not feel they have enough leverage to do this.
The plan can be modified or be something totally different from this, but the thought is the same: If unemployment and poverty is to be addressed and we fulfill the hopes and dreams of those marches 50 years ago, we must be serious about economic development.
It’s clear that the churches must play an important role in this because they are the only institutions we have that can leverage the economic means we need to get the job done. This is real prosperity ministry, where everyone prospers.
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American-community activist for more than 35 years. He is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org). To comment on this column, write to QAMagNews@nwlink.com.
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