Melvin Alexander
“My opinion is we need basically more jobs. We need training in fields. I also like to express that everyone who goes to jail is not bad people. A lot of us are not career criminals; some are in there for making bad choices, like selling drugs or what have you. A lot of us want to come out and reclaim responsibility for our lives because we’re not all bad. We want to gain responsibility and we would like some jobs, better training, education for ex-felons, especially non-violent ex-offenders.”
John Robertson
“They need to recreate the liaison that the older politicians had that they called the Precinct Captain. A good Precinct Captain is an endangered species. There is nobody out here to relate they’re message to the constituents. You never see them until election time. They don’t have that mechanism that it takes to make the people aware that there is going to be a forum or there is going to be a meeting, such as today. The turnout is deplorable. Who’s involved to get this message out? That’s what’s wrong. You never know anything about any candidate running until election time. And this is coming from an old Precinct Captain with Tom Casey and the. A retired 37th Ward superintendent whose been in the game and knows. Working for the constituents is dead. It’s like they’re all going for themselves. State representative got his own office, senator got his own office, alderman got his own office – there is no togetherness.
Louis Tillman
“I think there should be more done for the community like the ex-cons and people who are strung out on their addictions. I don’t think there is enough being done as far as people coming home from the penitentiary to help them get jobs. Without jobs they’re going right back to doing the stuff that they were doing. We don’t make ourselves available to do some different things. Then the things that we did when we went to jail, we’re going to do the same thing all over again. It’s just a revolving door. There should be more things done in terms of helping people, some more innovative ideas to help them with the recovery process and help them get situated living a normal life, a law abiding life.”
Maretta Brown Miller
“Elected officials need to be more visible and more accountable for the position for which they hold. They need to make sure they represent us in the way they are supposed to. It seems as though they are hiding and they are not coming out until its time for election. There are so many things that are going on in the community health wise, safety wise, educational wise, that they need to address. They need to talk to the constituents they represent, and the constituents need to hold the elected officials more accountable. And we don’t need to just see them at election time. There is a problem in the community at all times and they need to know about it.
Anita L. Walker
“I think what we need is forums like we’re having today. If we had forums more often we would be more informed about what each candidate is doing, and what is happening and we could go forward and vote for the people like we need to, because we would have better knowledge about elected officials. I think it’s a very informative thing they are doing today. The NAACP is really knocking it out the box, and I really just thank them for enlightening me to what is going on in my community and the state.”
