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The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”

The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”

By N Oji Mzilikazi

April 28, 2014

A “Rallye and Petition” email from an ad-hoc group of concerned citizens interested in preserving the Negro Community Centre (NCC) building in Little Burgundy, and soliciting input and support for a monster rally on Saturday May 24, 2014, is currently in circulation.

As much as I would like to see the NCC preserved, I find the desire and intent to make the NCC a cause célèbre to mobilise the community around to be ill-conceived, a knee-jerk reaction, and misdirected.

Are we never going to accept ownership for our self-oppression through organizational infighting, incompetence, sins of omission and commission, and our penchant to recruit, empower, and recycle egotistical, selfish, poorly-educated, visionless, and untrained soldier-leaders to lead troops on the front line of a war in which Blacks are attacked on all fronts, and we are perennially victims?

No wonder we  die from self-inflicted wounds.

There were no calls for a rally or petition when Centraide withdrew its funding from the NCC over issues of accountability and transparency. There were no calls for a rally or petition when the door of the NCC was locked in 1989. But now that bricks are on the street…