Support Local Businesses & Organizations

If you have been following our newsletters, then you probably realize we spend the better portion of our time promoting local businesses and organizations. Last week we featured Urban Arts Dance Co.’s Dana Ingram & Jenelle Yarbrough. These young women have taken this company from the ground up. Starting in 2005 they have brought their talents, passions and concern for the community to new levels. We made their link available last week and, sadly, few of you even bothered to look. You’ve seen “America’s Got Talent” and “So You Think You Can Dance?”. Great shows. But you haven’t seen these dancers, and they put those shows to shame. What I have seen first hand is so good, so well choreographed and executed – it will blow you away. I’ve been to New York & L.A. – I’ve been in the theater business – it simply doesn’t get any better. And you can be a part of it. But you’re not. Why not?

 

How much money have you lost in your retirement accounts and stock portfolios? How are those things working for you? Did you get your losses back when the big boys who squandered your investments were bailed out? I’m not rich, but the amount of money I lost would triple what the Urban Arts Dance Company is looking for. What about you?

 

We all hear lip service paid to small business as the “backbone of the American economy”, yet that very backbone gets nothing in all of these bailouts. When are we going to stop putting our money in the big box corporate world that never ceases to line its pockets with profits, declare insolvency and then open up shop like nothing ever happened – free & clear? All this while the little guys in our communities struggle, provide tremendous value, reach out – and get nothing in return from the taxes they pay. (They get lip service.)

 

I work in a city that declares it is motivated to help small business. Yet their definition of small business and the red tape they strangle everything with only benefits the “haves”. Many of the small businesses featured in our blog (http://sbforum.net) don’t meet the minimum requirements to be licensed in the city. Yet, without that license they cannot even begin to bid for city related projects. The same old cronies run the show, who have no real understanding of what it means to be a “small business”.

 

My friend, Ken Berry, says it all the time: “We stand not only on the shoulders of those who have gone before us, we stand on the shoulders of those who are among us.” Here is a list of small businesses and organizations in our community. It’s long past time to stop genuflecting at the altar of the big box corporation, and start investing in our community.

Alba Glass - African American Hunting Association - August West & Company – Kenneth John Marks – Blackstone Builders – Deep – Shiela Hanson – Northstar Coffeehouse – The World Arts Foundation - Urban Arts Dance Co. – Ron Wackerly Construction – The Ethiopian Project – Donors Resource – Wm. D. Herboth Remodelling – Traiel’s Food 4 the Soul – James Gordon – Stewart Kent – S. Renee Mitchell – Shareefah Abdullah – NW Hawghunters - Mikal Shabaaz