Simply Placing Your Cup In A Receptacle Is Improving Your Community…

There have always been dis­par­i­ties in the allo­ca­tion of funds depend­ing on the make­up of indi­vid­ual com­mu­ni­ties; there is no deny­ing that. This prob­lem will not go away as long as imper­fect peo­ple make deci­sions. With that said, we all must rec­og­nize that our com­mu­ni­ties are up to us to maintain.
Sure we pay tax­es, and we assume and pre­sume that those tax­es are to be used to take care of cer­tain func­tions in our com­mu­ni­ties, like pay­ing teach­ers, fire­fight­ers, police offi­cers, san­i­ta­tion, and oth­er pub­lic sec­tor workers.
But I just won­dered whether we would all be bet­ter off if we all cared for our own communities?
It is a ques­tion for which I know the answer, but I will not impose my views on you, my read­ers; cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties are treat­ed bet­ter than oth­ers, but can we do bet­ter, those of us who are of a cer­tain melanat­ed hue?
Can we keep our own com­mu­ni­ties clean by adopt­ing a small mod­icum of civic pride? How we treat our homes is reflect­ed in our streets and the rest of our com­mu­ni­ty. We do not have to have a lot of mon­ey to have pride in our community.
Growing up in Northern Saint Catherine, we did not have three pen­nies to make (tup­pence), but our house was always immac­u­late, the wood­en floor shiny like a new mir­ror. Our clothes were torn and worn, but we were always clean.
We did not have nice brooms, but we gath­ered the fall­en fronds that held the coconuts to the tree and kept the yard clean.
For those rea­sons, I con­tin­ue to be amazed at the behav­ior of some peo­ple in their own communities.

For instance, this morn­ing, while hav­ing a cup of cof­fee and stand­ing out­side my work loca­tion, across the street was a man drink­ing from a glass bot­tle. Having fin­ished his drink, he dropped the bot­tle on the grass by the side­walk, even though he was walk­ing toward a vis­i­ble garbage recep­ta­cle only a few feet from where he dropped the bot­tle. He could not be both­ered with car­ing enough about where he dis­card­ed the bottle.
Even if he does­n’t live in the com­mu­ni­ty, where is your civic con­scious­ness, man? But this is not some­thing con­fined to this indi­vid­ual, it is par for the course, and it is not just about lit­ter­ing the streets; it is also about drug deal­ing and oth­er qual­i­ty of life issues.
Maybe if we took charge of our own com­mu­ni­ties, oth­ers would respect us a lit­tle more.
On that note, I must con­grat­u­late Mayor Rob Rollison and his staff for expe­di­tious­ly attend­ing to one of those issues I speak of. That is the issue of drug-addict­ed peo­ple and the open drug Bazar that exist­ed in a cer­tain sec­tion of the city.
Thank you, Mayor Rollison, and your staff; we can all make a dif­fer­ence in this city we love.
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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.