Allen Johnson was another one of Action Greensboro's guests for last week's bus trip down to Greenville, SC.  Judging by his column in this morning's N&R, he adopted similar perceptions as mine as to the real purpose of the trip: passing the baton of civic leadership from the the hands of local foundations to our elected officials and Greensboro's diffuse business community.

Other than their pro-active mayor and city council, Greenville's main ingredient in their recipe for success is a term you will be hearing over and over in the coming years: public/private partnership.  Johnson gets the mantra going with this observation of where we are headed:  "...Public-private partnerships will be essential for the next key steps."

Non-profit foundations such as Cemela, Bryan and Weaver were probably never envisioned by those who endowed them as becoming a shadow government for Greensboro.  But, because of the vacuum of inspired elected leadership we have experienced over the last several years, the leaders of Action Greensboro filled a void that undeniably existed at the time of their inception.

With the upcoming elections, hopefully Greensboro will be getting at least a few new faces on our City Council.  Here's hoping these new faces, along with the familiar ones, will be up to the challenges and opprtunities they will be faced with.

Allen hopes that AG will hang around a little longer to help finish the work they started.  As much as I have disagreed with some of Action Greensboro's ways of doing business, I think he may have a point.

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Optimistic Pessimist points us to The Political Agitator who weighs in on last week's News & Observer coverage of the upcoming election for president of the NC NAACP.  The decision will be made next week during the group's annual meeting here in Greensboro.  The candidates are Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston who has led the organization since 1997 and Rev. Dr. William Barber II, a long-time civil rights activist from Goldsboro. 

The Agitator blog's author, Curmilus Dancy, is pulling no punches in who he thinks should lead the state's NAACP during the next term...

"All real NAACP members ought to be pissed with the arrogance of Melvin "Skip" Alston as he is doing what many racist whites does and that is to try to mislead black folks when it comes to real black leadership..."

"...In the N & O "Skip" said the NAACP wins its fights working behind the scenes with state legislators. This is scary because behind the scenes fights to me could raise several questions but for me the most important question is what comes along with the behind the scene fights? I see where money could play a role and it leaves room for the leader to be bought and sold. Remember I am always saying that I know the players and what they are capable of so I know that some legislators are in the business of buying off the Safe Negroes who will sell us out."

From the looks of things, the October 7th Convention is going to have lots of weblog coverage.  In addition to the two mentioned above, Jerry McClough has been posting about the challenge to Alston's reign and promises more.

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As a local political aside - it should be noted that Dr. Mazie Furguson - one of Greensboro's most prominent black leaders and current head of Greensboro's Pulpit Forum - has endorsed (bottom of post) challenger Barber.  Is this to be seen as a chink in Alston's local armor?

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Gaurino thinks the proposed $35M renovation of War Memorial Auditorium will be a hard sell.  I tend to agree.  Joe has other thoughts as well...

"...There is a certain grandiosity about this proposal that suggests that price is not being properly considered...    At a time of relative austerity... this proposal needs to be revisited at a much later date."

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I don't check Architecture, Antiques and Antiquities as often as I should so I have added Jim Schlosser's long-named blog to my recommended blogroll.  In addition, I really wish someone inside the N&R would submit Jim's RSS feed to Greensboro101 for syndication so more people would get hip to all that is going on over there.  It is good stuff.... like:

• Are historic districts in Greensboro becoming an endangered species?
• An upcoming rezoning case could bring a new coffee shop to Summit Ave.  This issue has been percolating here in the Aycock Neighborhood for several months and will be decided on October 10th by the Zoning Commission.  Personally, I am for the rezoning, but the Aycock neighborhood Board of Directors recently came out against the rezoning of the property at 623 Summit Avenue citing the possiblilty that such a zoning change might be incongruous with future recommendations of the Summit Ave. Corridor Study due out early next year.
• Jim bemoans the loss of 'shotgun houses' in Greensboro.  But he found some of the remaining examples of the housing type.

Judging by the lack of comments below each of Schlosser's very well written posts, it would seem that not enough folks know he is there.  The N&R would do well to plug this very important blog from time to time.  AAA is not even listed on most of the N&R's own blogs, which is a bit weird.  If they are not going to pimp one of their own blogs themselves, they should at least get him syndicated on 101.

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