To Mayor Steve Rosenthal, the Board of Aldermen and all citizens of Indianola, Mississippi.
I am writing to you with great disappointment and sadness as to what I’ve recently been reading in our local paper, The Enterprise-Tocsin, concerning the last few Board of Aldermen meetings.
Mayor Rosenthal and Board of Aldermen, I find it to be so sad and so appalling to all the citizens of Indianola when “you” our elected mayor and some of our elected aldermen cannot come together and take care of the affairs of our town without throwing two-year-old temper tantrums. Mayor Steve Rosenthal, Alderman Gary Fratesi, and newly elected Alderman Darrell Simpson, to get up and walk out of a board meeting just because you do not like what is being said is simply childish. Newly elected Alderman Marvin Elder and newly elected Alderman Sam Brock, to deliberately attend every board meeting with the intent to try and sabotage it is not what we elected the two of you to do either.
All of you were elected by the people because they felt that you all were very capable of getting the job done.
There is a poem that’s entitled “The Cold Within” by James Patrick Kinney and in this poem, I see a little of each of you men. The Poem reads:
Six humans trapped in happenstance in dark and bitter cold. Each one possessed a stick of wood, Or so the story's told.
Their dying fire in need of logs, the first man held his back; for of the faces around the fire, he noticed one was black.
The next man looking across the way saw one not of his church and couldn't bring himself to give the fire his stick of birch.
The third one sat in tattered clothes; he gave his coat a hitch. Why should his log be put to use to warm the idle rich? The rich man just sat back and thought of the wealth he had in store, and how to keep what he had earned, from the lazy, shiftless poor.
The black man's face bespoke revenge as the fire passed from sight; for all he saw in his stick of wood was a chance to spite the white. The last man of this forlorn group did naught except for gain; giving only to those who gave, was how he played the game.
The logs held tight in death's still hands, was proof of human sin. They didn't die from the cold without; they died from the cold within.
This poem is simply a parable about how we’ll allow foolish things to separate us and cause the “coldness”—which we supposedly Christians should not possess in our hearts anyway—to bring death to not only our local government but to our beautiful small town tucked away inside the heart of the Mississippi Delta.
Mayor Rosenthal and Board of Aldermen, your jobs are to grow our town and not to destroy it!
Your jobs are to fix our infrastructure and not to walk out on Board Meetings! Your jobs are to bring industry to our town and not to run it away. I mean, honestly, who would want to bring their business to a town where the elected officials can’t even get along.
Mayor Rosenthal and Board of Aldermen your jobs are to present our great town as a warm, family friendly, safe and secure place for anyone to move into and enjoy living.
But when I pick up the local paper, and I read about the mess that goes on at our local board meetings, I only see a town on the verge of ruin. You all have got to do better or give up those seats to someone who will. You were voted in and at the next election you can be voted out. Have a blessed day.
Bernice Gamble
