The Black East Side Buffalo Community & The Corrupt NY Route 33 Kensington Expressway Project
I am writing to forward this (I believe) critically important op-ed, concerning the Black East Side Buffalo Community, and the New York State Department of Transportation’s corrupt NY Route 33 Kensington Expressway Project – and its maltreatment of the Humboldt Parkway Neighborhood, and Lack of Respect or Regard for Black East Side Buffalo Community. The debacle that has unfolded surrounding this generation’s Kensington Project, however, is actually entirely encouraging. It means we are not only fighting back, as a community, we are (finally) starting to gain ground in that consideration.
I am also enclosing a copy of a concept and inception proposal I crafted at my consulting company, and which references a new Community Resident Organizing and Resident-led Community Action and Empowerment Entity, I am pursuing: the East Side Collaborative Partnership. Please know that I will be hard at work trying to ensure the cultivation of Neighborhood Resident Leadership Candidate Prospects, for The Partnership. and as I develop the initiative of the Organization, further. My long-range vision, is for the ‘umbrella’ entity to foster civil infrastructure projects that will aid our Black East Side Buffalo Community, and that will improve our impetus to work collaboratively, on and concerning Community-building Projects and Developments. To my way of thinking, our community is in dire need of Resident-led agencies, and initiatives, such as (a):
Humboldt Parkway Neighborhood-focused Community Development Corpration
Neighborhood Housing Services
Community Credit Union, etc.
So we can get desperately-needed cash into the hands of our brothers and sisters, in Black East Side Buffalo, as well as mobilize to protect against gentrification endangering our Black Community’s capacity to afford to live within inner-city Buffalo Neighborhoods, like Humboldt Parkway. My belief is that the institutions I’ve suggested, can form anchors and linchpins, for us, and are the tip of the (proverbial) iceberg of what is needed to transpire, to aid our Community’s Cause(s), and (to try to) address and (at least) attempt to offset our plight...inside this Buffalo Niagara Region.
In closing, the conversations I have been holding with Humboldt Parkway Neighbors, make it very clear that it is very important that our community’s leadership begin to envision that: (1) The Kensington Expressway needs to be removed, and (2) That some of The Kensington Project’s money needs to be left ‘on the table’, or gained from elsewhere, so that our city’s Black East Side Community can begin to dream of, and to work on, the level and variety of Community Redevelopment Work(s) described herein...on our own behalf.
I’ll stay in touch. Thank you, for all you do.
Sincerely,
Sherry E. Sherrill, President & CEO
Covington Associates Consulting CAC - An M/W/D/BE