The 2017 St. Petersburg District 6 city council election provided the undisputed final, insidious evidence that the white power has succeeded in taking over the formerly majority African district.
To contextualize the dirty move to appoint Williams, St. Petersburg is a city of 240,000 people with an African population of 42,000.
In the 1980s, city council districts 6 and 7 were ostensibly majority Black districts. The African majority in these districts would usually vote for and elect one or another African petty bourgeois candidate.
In addition, St. Petersburg is 95% built out. This means that the greedy white developers and the white power state that serves them have nowhere to build.
This economic contradiction of having nowhere to go with their development plans was a factor in the gerrymandering that occurred to facilitate the white power take over.
There were already obstacles to any progressive Black candidate being elected in St. Petersburg as the city developed charter language that rigged every city council election by allowing single member district voting in the in the so-called non-partisan primary.
Then the top two finalists in the primary face an at large election where the entire majority white electorate votes on each candidate.
This “hybrid” voting system hailed by the local Tampa Bay Times newspaper as a method to prevent ward politics is really a method to neutralize black voting power and let the white community be the deciding vote for all the city council districts.
Neocolonial puppetry opened the door for white power in St. Pete
The effort by white power to transform District 6 into a majority white district started with the appointment of Ernest Williams, who is African, to the city council in 2001.
Williams and three other African candidates went before city council to make their cases to be appointed to the District 6 seat vacated with the resignation of Frank Peterman.
The decision of the council to select Williams for the seat was striking in the sense that Williams was clearly the worse candidate among the four contenders.
Of course that was main reason he was chosen by the council, as they knew he would be one who could be controlled.
The Uhuru Movement also had a candidate that had declared intentions to run for the seat, but was refused an interview by the council.
Williams ended up winning the primary and and faced Chimurenga Waller, the Uhuru Movement candidate in the general election.
Williams won the general election and started what would be the 16-year effort to turn a majority black district 6 into a overwhelmingly majority white district.
Through the process called gerrymandering, where districts are re-drawn to help empower the white status quo, District 6 had its boundaries quietly gerrymandered before the 2005 city council election.
Through gerrymandering, the district 6 Black population was reduced from 58 to 53 percent, removing some 1,500 Black people from the district.
Ernest Williams was the chair of the city council in 2005 and had signed off on the gerrymandering of his own district 6.
Ironically, the collusion of Williams with the city government and the bourgeois to make his district whiter resulted in Williams losing the 2005 District 6 primary to a white candidate promoted by a sector of the Pinellas county democratic party.
He eventually won the general election with a vast amount of help from the Tampa Bay Times newspaper, who endorsed him and sung his praises.
Fast forward to 2008. That year Ernest Williams resigned from the council to run for the State legislature.
White power settling in to a gerrymandered district
The resignation of Williams offered the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeosie opportunists the leg up they needed.
On this occasion, the opportunist in question was one Karl Nurse, a white millionaire businessman and land speculator.
Nurse appeared before city council along with three Africans also vying to be appointed to the District 6 city council seat vacated after Williams’ resignation.
The city council selected Karl Nurse to serve as councilman as the first white city councilman in district 6 in more than 25 years!
The city council gerrymandered District 6 to its current configuration in 2011. Now district 6 is right where the bourgeosie wanted it all along.
It is a majority white district with 55 percent of the registered voters white and only 36 percent African.
This numerical dominance of white voters creates a nearly impossible task for an African to be elected in district 6.
During the campaigns for mayor and district 6 city council of Uhuru Movement candidates Jesse Nevel and Eritha “Akile” Cainion, the issue of the gerrymandering of District 6 was constantly driven home.
The Uhuru Movement candidates were excellent as they exposed the rigged election system in St. Petersburg, FL as just another colonial tactic to keep power in the hands of rich white developers and maintain the white status quo of the local state aparatus.
While our candidates did not get the most votes, they accomplished something much greater than getting elected to office: they have started the process to build the Communities United for Reparations and Economic Development (CURED) of which Akilé is chair and Jesse is vice chair.
Maintaining the platform of the two campaigns, one of CURED’s objectives will be to overturn the gerrymandering of District 6 and institute single member district elections for the city council.
All power to the People!
Black power to the African community!
