By: Prentiss Smith • Contributing Columnist
It is rare that a public news conference is opened with a prayer by a mayor or any public official. The mayor of Memphis didn’t open his public news conference with a prayer after the Tyree Nichols killing. He asked people to pray, but he did not engage in facilitating a prayer meeting at city hall. It is unusual to see a mayor of any city ask the gathered media and their acolytes to bow their heads, and let’s pray.
Yes, praying and being prayerful are certainly a good thing, but there is a reason why politicians don’t lead off their news conferences with prayers, and it is called separation of church and state. It is unconstitutional. Most government officials adhere to it, because they know that everybody isn’t into the thoughts and prayers narrative.
It is understood that people are frustrated with the shooting and killing in Shreveport, and looking for answers, but the answer is not for the mayor of Shreveport, nor the chairman of the city council to be leading a public news conference off with a prayer. and encourage people to pray in their quiet times or at their churches or synagogues; but public officials should not be mixing their religious beliefs with their political business.
The church should be the church, and the state should be the state -- period. Shreveport is not a religious monolith. It is a diverse city with diverse views on religion and politics. The mayor is not the pastor, and the city council is certainly not the deacon or deaconess board.
Now, no one is saying that prayer and praying are not a good thing. They are, but it is also clear to many citizens of Shreveport that if prayer could fix the problem, it would already be fixed. People have never stopped praying for the killing to stop, and they never will, but there are a lot of citizens who believe that praying is, and should be, a personal thing, and it should not be for public consumption.
There is a time for prayer and a time for public dissemination of information that educates and informs the citizenry. Citizens are holding prayer vigils on a regular basis, and there is nothing wrong with that, but city hall is not the place where prayer vigils should be held.
At a recent press conference, almost every city council member said a prayer, and that is not what they are supposed to be doing at city hall. It was like a revival meeting. No, it is not going to hurt anything to pray, but city hall is not the place for proselytizing and “winning souls.”
Citizens are not looking to the mayor nor the city council for religious leadership. Yes, the chairman of the council is a minister, and that is great, but the council chambers is not a church sanctuary, and council members, along with the mayor, would do well to remember that going forward.
Also, it is unbelievable that one of the very first things this new council did, along with holding prayer vigils, was to propose creating a new paid position with a fancy title for the city council. The ease at which politicians can spend taxpayer money is astounding. Many citizens don’t like it, and they don’t see the need for it.
It is like hiring someone to do the same job that they were elected by the citizens to do. It is called doing the job you were elected to do, and frankly, citizens should be annoyed and outraged. It is the same kind of arrogance that is seen from elected officials who say they are going to do one thing, and when they get into the office, they do something totally different.
That is precisely why citizens don’t trust politicians.
Every day someone is killed or shot in Shreveport, which is a heck of a statement to make, but sadly for the citizens of Shreveport, it is true. People can’t even enjoy a Mardi Gras parade without someone bringing a gun to the party and all hell breaking loose. It is scary and leaves people traumatized and looking to their political leaders for answers, not platitudes or prayers and thoughts.
The recent rash of random shootings and killings in Shreveport has citizens scratching their heads and wondering what it is going to take to stop this season of violence. The answers remain elusive. Too many guns are on the streets, and too many young men, particularly young black men, have access to them, and they apparently have no problem using them.
So many innocent human beings are being killed, wounded or maimed in this country, and regretfully, Shreveport is symbolic of what is happening around the country. Shreveport citizens deserve a political class that is more concerned about what is happening on the streets than adding another paid position to the already top-heavy city hall payroll.
That is all well and good, but the citizens of Shreveport don’t care about the petty political games being played at city hall between the city council and the mayor. They care about the fact that Pines Road between 70th Street and Buncombe Road is just deplorable and needs repairing yesterday.
They care about Kings Highway between Line Avenue and Creswell being like an obstacle course with drivers dodging potholes everywhere. It may sound like something small, but citizens want to drive their cars and trucks on streets that don’t send them to the tire shop every month.
Yes, prayer is a good thing, but the citizens are not looking to the politicians for prayers.
They are looking for the politicians to be good stewards of their money and to provide services like safe communities, better streets and all the other vital city services that they were elected to provide. Creating new paid positions to do duplicative work and praying at news conferences are not what the citizens elected them to do. And that is the way I see it.
smithpren@aol.com