Leflore County residents need to get involved and hold officials accountable for what they do, Supervisor Robert Moore said Wednesday.
Moore, who represents District 2, spoke to the Greenwood Voters League.
Members of the board had been asked to speak at the meeting about the county’s newly adopted redistricting plan. Moore was the only one who attended.
He said that the plan is in place for the 2015 county elections and that it is too late for citizen input.
“I’m here to inform you that the ship has sailed,” he said. “If you wanted to have a say in the redistricting plan, then shouldn’t we have been at the table when it was going on? That’s six months ago.”
He said he voted against it because some people who had been in his district for years are now in District 3, which runs “almost all the way across the county, from the Sunflower County line to Mississippi 7.”
Moore said he was concerned that many voters, particularly the elderly, who had been voting at the Leflore County Civic Center for years would now have to vote at the fire station downtown.
There still are four majority-black districts, he said.
Saying that he plans to run for re-election next year, Moore urged the crowd to get involved and hold officials accountable. “If he ain’t doing the things that we need to have done to help our community, we need to what? Move him,” Moore said.
The situation faced by many county residents is appalling, as a drive around South Greenwood will show, he said. It’s hard to talk about “providing leadership and mentorship and any other kind of ‘ship’” for young people given the conditions many of them live in, he said.
“Six folks in a shotgun house that you can look at — look down and see the ground, look up and see the sky — ain’t no place to raise a family in 2014 in America,” he said.
• Contact Bob Darden at 581-7239 or bdarden @gwcommonwealth.com. .
