What the Mayor could learn from the Navy SEALs

Insignia of the U.S. Navy SEALs.

Plainfield Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs could definitely learn a lesson or two from the SEALs, the Navy's crack force that succeeded in bringing the career of Osama bin Laden to an end.

In the call for her 'emergency community meeting' on Tuesday evening, Mayor Robinson-Briggs was quoted in the Courier (see here) as inviting attendees --

...Robinson-Briggs on Monday afternoon announced a "call to action strategy meeting'' for 6 p.m. Tuesday in the city hall library on Watchung Avenue. The mayor said she is inviting city officials, residents and merchants to attend the meeting and brainstorm about ways to curtail the violence, much of which has been attributed to gang activity [emphasis added -- DD].

I was stunned that a year and a half into her second term and after a string of homicides that stretches back to last summer, Mayor Robinson-Briggs is asking us to BRAINSTORM.

Brainstorming is a useful process, but it is associated with the BEGINNING of a of strategizing or problem solution. After all the blood that has been spilled, how can we be just at the beginning of solving the problem?

Nevertheless, I went to the meeting.

About seventy people crowded into the Library at City Hall, spilling into the ante-room. There were clergy, residents and activists. There were those who are running programs reaching out to youth. There were figures, like J.M. Benjamin, who command great respect in the community and offer themselves as object lessons to young people on overcoming difficulties and poor choices.

There were Council members (Adrian Mapp and Rebecca Williams; Cory Storch was prevented from attending because of being out of town on business; the others were not present). There were also residents like the grandmother from Manson Place who were looking for answers and people with whom to join in working on solutions.

Two things, alas, were missing --

• The Hispanic community was absent, as was
• The kind of leadership the community has a right to expect of the Mayor, its highest elected official. BRAINSTORMING, indeed!

That is where the lessons of the Navy SEALs are so appropriate, and timely.

What are those lessons?

To really attack the problem of youth violence and youth opportunity, here is a brief list --

1. Recruit the best that can be found -- INCLUDING YOUNG PEOPLE -- to a task force chartered with developing a plan of action;
   
   
2. Empower the task force to do just that by giving them access to the resources needed -- including the facts as they are known;
   
   
3. Inventory the assets and liabilities affecting the question of young people and their safety and opportunities;
   
   
4. Develop a plan of action based on this assessment and not on anecdotes;
   
   
5. Lastly, execute with precision.

That would be leadership, the kind of leadership to which Plainfield residents are entitled.

And it would be about time.

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-- Dan Damon [follow]

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