Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 19, 1993 TAG: 9306190242
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARGARET EDDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
He had come thousands of miles, and was marching on a 91-degree day among the ghosts and memories of a city's slave-owning past, he said, to find ways of healing his own country.
"Here is all the material for us to make out of the ashes of apartheid a very inspired democracy," Polo said.
Surrounded by hundreds of marchers from Atlanta and Los Angeles, India and Rio de Janeiro, Richmond and Chesterfield County, Polo joined in a two-mile "Unity Walk" that for many was the defining moment in a four-day conference on racism.
An estimated 500 people danced, prayed, and sang as they walked past a spot where Africans were jailed while awaiting the seller's block; past the site of a mansion that doubled as a stop on the Underground Railroad; past the Capitol where segregation laws were penned and a black governor now presides.
Along the way, Polo and others talked about their reasons for attending a conference billed as "an honest conversation on race, reconciliation, and responsibility." And they offered fears and hopes that, many said, have import far beyond Richmond. Among the voices:
A New York lawyer, who declined to give his name, said his journey was part of a quest for broader understanding of America's poor.
"I live a very sheltered life," he said. "I grew up in Manhattan, I attended private schools, I live in a very affluent suburban community [Scarsdale]. I felt there was something really missing in my life."
What he will take away from a conference whose speakers included a grandson of Mahatma Ghandi, former Los Angeles gang members and the founder of an Australian God's Squad Motorcycle club, the man said, is that "we make certain assumptions about people based on stereotypes" that often are wrong.
Her motivation for coming, said Antoinette McGeorge, was to learn what she as a suburbanite could do to help the urban poor.
As a black woman, she rejoiced a few years ago in her escape to middle-class security in the suburbs, McGeorge said. More recently, she has been troubled by a growing disparity between the economic conditions of cities and suburbs.
"I see the city and county widening, not coming together," said McGeorge, who hopes after the conference to start cross-cultural classes at her office.
For Jim Snyder, a Presbyterian minister in suburban Pittsburgh, the concerns are similar. "Over time, many people of conscience have moved away from cities," said Snyder, as he stood overlooking a James River port where slaves once were unloaded.
Now, his concern is that too few in his congregation feel responsibility toward those left behind. "Unless we unite, there's not much hope," he said. "It's a very big struggle."
One of the most dramatic moments in the Richmond conference came Thursday night when Richmond Vice Mayor Larry E. Chavis, who is black, called for consolidation of the city and neighboring counties into a metropolitan government.
Chavis' remarks came during a workshop by former Albuquerque, N.M., Mayor David Rusk, author of "Cities Without Suburbs." Rusk holds that central cities which cannot expand their geographic and tax bases are doomed. Richmond, like most other Virginia cities, is locked into its current boundaries by tough state annexation laws.
As Richmond Mayor Walter T. Kenney and Chesterfield County Supervisor Jack McHale III walked side by side through Richmond streets Friday, each acknowledged that the consolidation idea is intriguing - but neither was willing to embrace it.
Kenney agreed that blacks, who fought years for the political power they hold in Richmond and many other core cities, would find it difficult to give up some of that power.
And McHale noted: "Right now, I don't think suburbanites see Richmond's problems as their problems as a general rule. . . . But people need to feel we are a community."
by CNB