Citizens of Minden, do you not see what has become of your city? Once, the utilities office was filled with men and women who knew us, who lived as we lived, who carried the same burdens we carry. They were the kind of people you might pass in the grocery store, or clasp hands with on Sunday morning at church. They worked until retirement because they cared, because service to the people meant something.
But those days are gone. In their place we now find an Assistant City Clerk working double duty as the Utilities Office Manager and City Clerk, surrounded by staff who cannot carry out the simplest of duties—unable even to take a payment or perform a transfer with competence. And I ask you, how many of our people remain in that office, or anywhere in City Hall? Look closely, and you will find the numbers shrinking.
When it came time to choose, the citizens were persuaded to place their trust not in one who shared their struggles, but in one handpicked to serve the mayor’s design. Was it not clear when the mayor himself launched a GoFundMe for this very Assistant City Clerk years ago? His intentions were declared then, and they are fulfilled now.
Councilman Michael Roy proclaimed he would make City Hall “great” again. Yet we must ask: great for whom? For the struggling citizens who wait in line for fair service, or for those intent on restoring City Hall to a place where only certain faces are welcome?
This is not progress—it is regression, a deliberate turning back of the clock to a time when the voices of our people were silenced and their labor disregarded. Minden, I put the question to you: will you remain silent as your City Hall is remade in the image of exclusion, or will you demand a government that looks like the people it claims to serve?
The answer will determine whether Minden’s future is built on justice—or on the rubble of its discarded voices
The Voice of Ida B Wells 