Back in another life, I lived in Northport, Alabama, which is just across the Black Warrior River from Tuscaloosa.
I worked at the University of Alabama in the state’s real estate center, which was housed in the business school.
My executive director taught me a lot about running a sustainable and profitable operation.
Besides his openly Baptist faith, his second religion was building relationships.
If I remember nothing else about my time at the center, I will remember these two lessons from this great man: Don’t post about politics (on social media) and relationships matter.
In fact, “Relationships Matter” was one of our core beliefs.
Politics is always divisive. The minute we start talking politics, we alienate half of the sets of ears who are listening to us.
But politics is unavoidable.
Everything from Bud Light to college tuition is politics.
That’s why relationships are so important. Good relationships transcend political divides.
In our case at the center, our mission was to support the state’s residential and commercial real estate industries, providing education and career opportunities for future growth.
A large portion of our funding came from legislative appropriation.
Then there was every ego in the real estate business to contend with and all the political beliefs that came with that.
We managed to stay above that and put the relationship before all other things.
But the concept of “Relationships Matter” applies to any industry, including the media.
I was reading a newspaper article this past week about a recent town hall conducted by State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney.
Edney essentially said that Delta hospitals are going to have to band together in order to survive.
He’s right.
The calvary is not coming for our failing health care system.
No one is coming to fix our rutted streets or our caving bridges.
The Delta is rural to begin with, and our declining population makes it even more impractical for state and federal lawmakers to prioritize large-scale expensive projects in the region.
We are going to have to do a lot of this ourselves.
But there’s no way we can do it as fractured as we are here.
There are so many great organizations — churches, businesses, health care facilities and schools — in the region.
But no one seems to be talking to each other much these days.
I don’t know if it’s remote working or burnout, but there’s a disconnect.
We see examples every week of more people leaving the negotiating table than coming to it for answers.
We see governmental boards fighting other boards.
We see some politicians’ contempt for the voters and the press.
This is not a recipe for solutions.
This is the road to ruin.
The COVID emergency is over. Let’s start talking to each other again.
If we don’t talk to one another here in the Delta, who else is there?
