‘Emerging Leaders’ envision Buffalo Renaissance that includes them

Friends, family and mentors gathered in an events room on Buffalo State’s campus over the weekend to watch the first group of 25 “Emerging Leaders” graduate. The graduates were exuding confidence as they cheered one another on, one-by-one stepping forward to claim their certificates and grab a photo with program board members.

Offered by Open Buffalo, an advocacy group that partners with many of the region’s public interest organizations, the grassroots program brought together people from many walks of life who might not ordinarily be asked to participate in corporate sponsored leadership programs.

The participants received three months of training in organizing, advocacy and public engagement through classwork and real world experience, like earlier this fall when participants canvassed the city district that will benefit from a participatory budgeting pilot program.

At the ceremony, Sherman Webb spoke on behalf of his classmates. He, like some of the event’s other speakers, implored his colleagues to turn their attention to the great investment happening in the city and to fight to make certain that the money being spent benefits people from all parts of the city.

“There are opportunities that exist in Buffalo,” Webb said. “There are resources that exist in Buffalo. However, there are people who look like me and come from where I’m from or have some sort of circumstance that they have to overcome that don’t really have the time or opportunity to have access to these resources that are available to them.”

Equipped with the skills they had developed over the last few months, it was his “Emerging Leader family,” as he calls them, that now has to continue to apply pressure to people in power to ensure that the benefits of the Buffalo Billion and other public investments are made available to everyone.

“Now is the time that we continue this work at a higher level,” Webb said. “Now is the time that we share information if we have it. Now is the time to ask for help if you need it, offer help if you can give it. To be honest with you, now is the time that we open Buffalo.”

Open Buffalo is just one of many groups watching the way that resources from the state are being distributed at a time when the city is seeing its most significant government investment and attention in a generation.

BUILD Buffalo, PUSH Buffalo, the Fruit Belt/McCarley Gardens Housing Task Force and the Partnership for the Public Good are just a few of the groups that have been raising questions about the benefits that people in the poorest neighborhoods, who the groups argue have been shut out of previous economic development initiatives in the city for decades, will reap from the massive state investment.

And as the calls for equitable opportunity have mounted and grown in volume lawmakers have started to take notice.

Early this summer a marked shift in rhetoric from politicians and officials began in which every utterance of the “New Buffalo” or the “Buffalo Renaissance” was paired with an assurance that all residents would benefit from the image-altering changes that are happening in the city.

When in early August Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited the massive Riverbend site - where Elon Musk’s SolarCity plans to start building solar panels some time later this year - he made sure to include a nod to those calling for an equitable distribution of jobs and opportunity.

“We’re going to make this success, not just a great success for the few, but a success for the many,” Cuomo said. Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz and Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, all in attendance, echoed his sentiment.

Still, several developments have cast doubt on those pledges.

In September the Investigative Post reported that the state’s original minority hiring goal of 25 percent at the time the land sale was signed had been lowered to 15 percent at the signing of the project labor agreement. It also found that the contractor LPCiminelli was not reaching those goals.  State and city officials argued that the original number, highlighted by the governor’s office in a press release, had never been officially agreed to and that the number in the agreement reached between the contractor and labor unions was beyond their control.

Brown, who that same day signed an Opportunity Pledge with Open Buffalo, defended the hiring numbers, noting that the company had since elevated its minority hiring to meet the 15 percent goal.

In early October Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant, along with members of PUSH, BUILD Buffalo and area clergy, gathered outside the construction project to protest.

Political leaders have also started to take concrete steps towards educating and training the workforce. Cuomo has committed $44 million in Buffalo Billion funds to build the Workforce Development Center in the Northland Corridor, a former site of many industrial jobs that have long been gone in one of the city’s job-starved neighborhoods.

And last week, Assemblyman Sean Ryan announced he, along with many members of the faith and advocacy communities, would start a program called HIRE Buffalo that aims to hook employers getting state money up with job seekers in the city’s zip codes with the highest rates of poverty.

Back at the graduation ceremony, Franchelle Hart, the Open Buffalo executive director, stood beaming and laughing, with a slight grip on the forearm of a graduate as they exchanged goodbyes.  She said that the reason her organization started the leadership program was to instill in people the skills and confidence needed to help them stay on politicians and civic leaders making promises like those being made now about the city’s economic turnaround.

“I think that today is a piece of it,” Hart said. “That’s what our participants learned, how to take your dream and put it into action.”

Hart’s organization and the 25 people they worked with over the recent months will be watching closely to make certain that the officials put their money where their mouths are and keep up the pressure that has been building, she said.

“We don’t have to accept what their vision of development looks like.”