The Unreasonable Man
Meditations on Progress, Loss, and Community
"Our past is bleak. Our future dim. But I am not reasonable. A reasonable man adjusts to his environment. An unreasonable man does not. All progress, therefore, depends on the unreasonable man... I refuse the prison of ‘I’ and choose the open spaces of ‘we.'"
“When the smoke cleared three days later…the 1964 uprising seared Black Rochester into the nation’s conscience.”
The year 1964 marked one of the most pivotal in organizing history. A night of dancing on Nassau Street in the heart of Northeast Rochester erupted into a charged altercation between police and residents, leaving 350 injured and 900 people arrested. Concerned, tired, viscerally angry neighbors pushed back in protest against police brutality, giving rise to a series of Black rebellions that emerged across the U.S.
Rochester, NY rose to the national stage of Black political mobilization in 1964—and 2020’s resurgence of movement organizing positioned Rochester for promising structural change.
While integral progress in labor organizing, community alternatives to policing, youth investment, and increased conversations surrounding mental health continue to gain traction, it’s simultaneously met with a cascade of societal loss. Half of the Black children in Rochester’s Monroe County live in poverty, compared to 12% of White children. The homeownership rate among White residents in Monroe County is 71%, while less than half of Black and Latinx residents own homes. As numerous cases of police brutality erupted in 2020—dominating discourse and the subsequent protests over the summer, Rochester became the focus of national attention when the community responded in outrage to the death of Daniel Prude—who was restrained by the police during a mental health emergency.
This tension between progress and loss aggravates our perception of true societal change. This essay untangles the intricacies of liberation. How do we continue to hold hope for building something new while existing in the byproduct of historical wrongs?
Coming Back Home, 2019
I started doing local government work after I moved back home to Rochester. As a pre-dental student turned avid poli-sci-theory-and-research-obsessed graduate, falling into the practical world of government and politics was new but resonant. The issues are paramount because you’ve lived them, and the community is familiar because it's yours. I began volunteering on political campaigns and working on community programs, aimed at addressing the lack of access to resources in Black communities.
Health professionals push for increased COVID-testing and vaccination access in Black communities
Political candidates polish tagline messaging and strategy—
Community advocates rally against racist policing,
Community program workers push for stable housing and city school improvements.
An arduous yet intrinsic propensity to work in spaces where the measure of success was our own literal existence and fortified dignity.
Rewinding Back, 1964
The 1964 uprisings in Rochester were one of a series of Black demonstrations happening across the United States. On a hot summer night in July, youth and families gathered for a block party to decompress from the heat while raising funds for recreational facilities. When a young inebriated man became disruptive, dance organizers called the police. Arriving with dogs, white officers' aggressive police tactics escalated tensions with the residents, leading to unrest throughout the neighborhood for sixty hours. Formed in the aftermath of Rochester’s 1964 riots, FIGHT—Freedom, Independence, God, Honor, Today—was a community organization comprised of Black churches, tenant associations, and book clubs that organized protests agitating for change. FIGHT pushed momentum on policing through organized protests/demonstrations, while also zeroing in on advancing economic development—propelling Rochester as a leader in the new Black Political economy. They consolidated 135 member organizations under their umbrella.
The Black population in Rochester was steadily rising—it increased from only 2.4% in 1950 to around 7.4% in 1964. Today, the overall Black population in Rochester is roughly 40%. As the Black population grew, so did the growing discontent—marred by police brutality, unsafe housing, and divested school systems—in turn, ushered in a community with limited access to jobs, wealth, or resources needed to sustain a stable livelihood. Focused on improving economic development, hiring practices, and living conditions, FIGHT leaders and advocates garnered mass community mobilization amid a direct attack on the wealth and well-being of Black people throughout the city.
"There were people back then who said we had to get out of the street and into the boardroom. Our folk went into the boardrooms, and we suffered. And that is where we are today."
Minister Franklin Florence Sr.
I’ve been blessed to know Minister Franklin Florence Sr. since I was a child, as he used to preach at my family’s church. My parents moved from Akwa Ibom state in Nigeria to Rochester during the 80s/90s. Understandably moving so far away from home was extremely difficult—so finding community in a new home was important to them.
They joined the Nigerian Association of Rochester and began attending Central Church of Christ where Minister Franklin preached. I remember, every Wednesday after youth choir practice we would play in the church parking lot during the hot summer months—
Racing each other,
Boys playing basketball.
Making up intricate dance routines with the girls.
The hot black concrete lot sparkled in the sun;
Felt warm and familiar.
Not only did the church help ease my parent’s transition to the States—my formative years in community were built there.
As the founder and first president of FIGHT, he was dedicated to uplifting the Black community out of the chronic lack of investment in community infrastructure. As white flight led people to the suburbs—commuting on the new highways and siphoning money away from the city’s tax bases—concentrated poverty in Black and brown communities led to overcrowding, lack of neighborhood vitality, and lack of community safety.
"The stores here only had food you wouldn't serve a dog, selling at high prices, all the while denying access to employment," Florence said. "It was all of this. Our people were crying out for relief."
As a kid, driving into the suburbs to shop at the mall or buy groceries felt distinctively disparate—the suburban green space, access to grocery stores, and public amenities paralleled against the city’s crowded housing, vacant lots, and empty storefronts was unnerving. Why exactly could we not have this too?
Eastman Kodak, a giant film company that dominated Rochester at the time, became a top priority for Florence. Kodak, along with other companies like Xerox, historically had a massive lack of diversity in hiring. FIGHT pushed the film conglomerate to address the high rates of unemployment and poverty in the Black community by expanding hiring to more people of color. The local struggle in Rochester jumped to the national scene in 1967.
FIGHT began persuading Kodak shareholders to their demands and garnered national media coverage from major publications such as the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Underscoring the growing influence of Black power organizations during these changing times, Kodak signed a working agreement with FIGHT and created a job-training program that led to increased jobs for Black workers. Kodak trained and hired roughly 700 people from the Black community in Rochester.
FIGHT’s campaign against Kodak ignited other inroads to economic development, including Xerox. “Joseph Wilson (Head of Xerox) asked what we wanted,” Florence said. “We told him we wanted a factory.”
That factory was named Fighton. When I asked Florence to tell me more about the history of Fighton, he spoke passionately about its purpose and vision. He didn’t want it to be just any regular company. He wanted it to be by and for the community—which is why it was owned not only by the FIGHT organization but by the employees as well.
1973 - F.I.G.H.T. Village
Dedicated to housing quality and creating community vitality, Florence and FIGHT organizers also wanted to run a housing project—which led to the creation of FIGHT Village in 1973, located near the factory. He adamantly opposed creating a tower for housing. Most of the housing in the neighborhoods I grew up in were these tall towers, with minimal outdoor space or public amenities—making it difficult to build and sustain community with neighbors. Space was stolen from us and resold as luxury.
"These absentee landlords would divide single-family homes into two, three, four, and five units," Florence said. "They were crowding our people into these places like cattle. So on Sundays, we would call all the pastors together, and we would go out to Pittsford and Greece and flood their neighborhoods with flyers saying, 'Did you know your neighbor is a slumlord?' He wanted the housing to be a true community—low-rise, family-oriented housing where children could play together, and families could feel a sense of connection amongst each other.
Despite this massive push for economic development in employment and housing, Florence emphasized that not much has changed. “The issues people of color face in Rochester reflect what's happened around the country. And they haven't changed much; America remains locked in its struggle with racism,” Florence said.
Due to concerns that ‘Fighton’ as a name was too militant in the business world, the name was eventually changed to Eltrex—a mash-up of Electrical, Transformer and Xerox. Eltrex then created a new business model with a renewed focus on building profit, moving away from the community-centric vision that Florence intended.
The shift to a more profit-centered focus for Eltrex undercut the potential to build sustainable wealth and vitality for Black residents holistically. Fostering job growth and entrepreneurship—while continuing to have a community-focused vision of liberation in mind—can ground the movement in a way that is sustainable for long-term wealth. It is pernicious to lose sight of the community.
Florence’s story and experience with FIGHT illustrate the difficulty of organizing work and the importance of being amenable to setbacks. "We have quite a few young men and women today, and they're fighting the good fight," Florence said. They need to continue to push back because the issue is just as relevant today, he said.”
Minister Florence harbored this harmonious balance of optimism and realism. We’d talk for hours about the terrifying state of the world while underscoring how integral it is to keep hope alive. The omnipresent push and pull to make things better was something he understood all too well. He’d illustrate stories to me from the 1960s like they happened yesterday; I’d rush to take vigorous notes. From book recommendations for me to read, people I should reach out to, topics I should think more about, no matter how difficult times were, I found stillness in learning.
From listening to him preach as a kid to gaining a mentor and a friend over the years, Minister Florence will always remain a constant force for me. His loss was painfully gutting.
Fast forward, Summer of 2020
With cities nationwide struggling from financial and economic distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a myriad of issues—stemming from chronic divestment—exacerbated pre-existing racial inequalities in housing, employment, and wealth for Black and Brown communities.
In Rochester, the homeownership gap between Black and white residents is nearly half, with 17,076 white homeowner households compared to 8,314 Black homeowner households (The Urban Institute). The median household income gap is also nearly half, with $28,000 yearly for Black households compared to $47,000 for white households (The Urban Institute). While nearly two-thirds of Rochester residents rent housing, Black renting households take the lead, with 23,468 Black households renting compared to 634 Asian, 9,566 Hispanic, and 20,792 white households (The Urban Institute). Most striking, however, is the gap in total housing wealth (measured in millions USD), with a number of $934 for Black households compared to $2,640 for white households (The Urban Institute).
An NPR investigation found that “Since 2015, police officers have fatally shot at least 135 unarmed Black men and women nationwide.” After a review of court, police, and other records of these cases, at least 75% of the officers involved were white.
Economic instability and police brutality have led advocates to the streets with calls to reimagine policing– raising important questions about community well-being. What exactly keeps communities safe? What resources do communities need? How do we continue to prioritize community in the face of chronic individualism?
The world of 1964 and 2020 mirror their own respective realities—two movements dedicated to halting the imminent police brutality and economic instability that was collapsing vitality in Black communities.
"New York state hosts the highest concentration of wealth in the United States – yet it holds the largest gap between rich and poor."
"New Yorkers who are worth more than $30 million own a combined $6.7 trillion in wealth, composing about 0.4% of the state's population. These New Yorkers also hold about a fifth of the total wealth held by all of the richest Americans."
I met Dr. Lomax Campbell while I was working at the City Hall of Rochester. I served as a staffer on the RASE (Racial & Structural Equity Commission) for the City of Rochester, and he served on the Business Development working group for RASE. RASE was a joint city and county governmental response to the unrest happening both locally and nationally in 2020 and was established to review, identify and recommend changes to local laws to address systemic racism. My experience running community engagement, outreach, and communications showed me the importance of community representation. From community organizers, healthcare professionals, college students and elected officials, the commission was built to engage diversity in age, gender, profession, race, and lived experience across Monroe County.
Campbell holds a wealth of knowledge on not only government operations, but also culture, community, and philosophy. In this interview, we explored concepts of wealth, community, progress, and loss.
Campbell described wealth as anything an individual or community cares about, that they’re striving to increase. Campbell explained the “eight capitals” of wealth—intellectual, financial, natural, cultural, built, political, individual, and social. As the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Wealth Building, Campbell used this principle to guide the development of personalized “wealth equations” for clients—small businesses and entrepreneurs his team helped to advise. The equation helped them identify what aspects of wealth they were looking to advance. As a department, they started with a small staff and a $20,000 operating budget. They were able to eventually raise $750,000 in their first year as a department to support and expand operations.
The Revitalize Rochester Fund, Rochester Financial Empowerment Centers, and the expansion of the Rochester Economic Development Corporation (REDCO) were key department programs aimed at building wealth and expanding the development and coordination of viable entrepreneurial and small business ecosystems.
"Racial equity work must be collective and collaborative to shift the systemic oppression that lives and grows within the groundwater of our nation’s roots. The relationships that we cultivate in essence become our community – Those relationships build our collective ethos, which is how we emanate culture”
The Revitalize Rochester Fund aimed to build businesses and worker cooperatives in underserved Rochester communities, to foster more economic activity in struggling areas due to a historical lack of investment. Kiva Rochester was another funding opportunity for small businesses, offering 0% interest crowdfunded loans—no minimum credit score needed.
While Campbell explained these milestones as a department, there were of course drawbacks—most notably, infrastructure and timing. With these projects and programs, sometimes the systems are not as well-integrated as they could be, and the needed infrastructure isn’t there—such as staff support and updated technology. Lengthy and cumbersome application processes for minority and women-owned business certifications pose barriers to building wealth for people of color. This slows down the process for small businesses and entrepreneurs, impacting the speed of expanding economic development.
Amid the wins and the challenges of the department, Campbell is hopeful and remains steadfast in the work to expand and grow Rochester. He currently is the founder and CEO of Third Eye Networks, a multicultural marketing and management strategy consortium with national network partners, such as ecosystem builders, software developers, business resource providers, creatives, community organizers, organizational coaches, and grantmakers. The work to build a more sustainable community in Rochester is constant. “We have always understood progress to be linear when in reality it is more of an oscillation—things move in waves and cycles,” Campbell explained.
“We have social progress and regress, and when we look back you realize you can draw a best-fit line from where a community started organizing, and where they ended up. We can’t stop organizing, educating, and being in community.”
I met Stanley Martin for the first time at a designation meeting, which is where candidates running for office spoke to Democratic committee members on the issues and why they would be a good fit to represent their district. Having volunteered on several political campaigns in Rochester, I volunteered on her campaign for City Council. Mostly doing communications and writing work for the campaign, over time I got to know Martin and learn more about her integral work in the Rochester community.
As a community organizer and advocate for mental health services, running on both the Democratic and Working Families Party line, Stanley was elected into City Council in 2021. Martin ran as part of the “People’s Slate,” a coalition of Black Lives Matter activists committed to bridging the momentum of movement organizing with legislative advocacy in this new City Council Seat.
“This is not just a fight so that we can live, it's a fight so that we can be whole, that we can enjoy all the beauty that life has to offer us. These seats belong to the people and we will continue to do the work to make sure that all elected officials truly represent and serve the people.”
As one of the co-founders of Free The People Roc, a grassroots organization dedicated to Black liberation, Martin was on the frontlines of the protests that erupted in 2020 after the death of Daniel Prude. While providing direct services with other organizers to families—who have been impacted by police brutality and community instability, Martin realized the disparities in wealth and communal livelihood needed to be addressed—and in lockstep with the community.
We talked a bit about the work being done on the ground and what milestones she has seen in her time as an organizer. The organizing around the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA)—the law decriminalizing marijuana in NYS—was a significant one in addition to bail reform—which ends cash bail for non-violent misdemeanors. With a shifting narrative in how we think about mental health and the importance of destigmatizing it, people began thinking of ways to create alternative responses to police—such as the Person in Crisis (PIC) team that was created in Rochester, NY.
“All of these changes have happened due to deep ideological decolonization and education, “ she said. “If we want to progress as a community, we really have to understand what people think, why they think that way, and pose alternatives and narratives that align with what will bring the community forward.”
The tension between wins and losses in the fight for liberation is something we simply can’t ignore. There have been many rollbacks to the aforementioned wins, and it’s a constant fight. The historic bail reform legislation that passed in 2019 has been under constant attack due to the spread of misinformation and fear by opponents of the law. The first set of rollbacks occurred in 2020. “And two years later, even after the release of research showing no connection between bail reform and rising crime, a second round of rollbacks passed in April 2022.”
“For each step we take, it feels like there is this massive, interlocked powerful system that pushes us back into our heels even further,” she said. “Sometimes it becomes hard to celebrate wins when you know that wins within the system are constantly under attack. We have to anticipate and work against systems that want to reverse a lot of the changes that we’ve been fighting for.”
With regard to wealth, Stanley has a complicated relationship with the concept. “I struggle to find positive connotations with wealth,” said Martin. “The imagery that comes to my mind is wealth disparity—you know, walking down Melville, you see how one side is so beautiful, and the houses are in good condition—and yet right across the street, you see houses that are struggling. The disparities are striking.”
She explained that wealth is always almost framed as something that is inherently positive, but for people who don't have access to it, the disparity means that “...exploitation has happened, it means that someone is benefiting from someone else’s labor in a way that isn't equitable. The history of redlining and the coordinated attack on the lives and well-being of Black people has led to a massive gap in building long-term wealth in our community.”
Having served on City Council for nearly a year, Stanley holds the community close in her organizing and city council work. “We know that freedom is a constant struggle, and stepping collectively into this seat on city council is just one part of that struggle. We must continue to organize, study, remain vigilant, and be ready to mobilize for our collective liberation.”
How do we continue to hold hope for building something new while existing in the byproduct of historical wrongs?
Wealth has historically been framed as the pinnacle of the American Dream.
If you work hard enough, you, too, can experience the happy and fulfilled lifestyle of said Dream.
And yet—throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, workers' wages grew by 10%—while billionaires saw their wealth grow by 62%.
“And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy.”
How does a community mean?
What exactly fulfills us?
There exists no immediate commensurate remedy against a violent system that continues to weave and feed into itself. Hope remains resonant; unabating. The ebbs and flows of progress and loss are two realities that we must learn to hold concurrently.
Community cultivates presence—placating tensions between loss and progress. The culture of mass individualization is killing us—with the onset of COVID-19 and hyper-digitization of our lived experiences, we operate in ubiquitous disconnection. Minister Florence underscored the power of organized community – rejecting the semantics and hyperbole commonly surrounding “community” for one that’s real, tangible; operative.
Losing sight of what really matters undercuts our ability to reimagine.
It’s not only imperative that we continue the fight for a better world. It’s also honoring the beauty in the journey of finding out who we truly are when we are free.
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