They Don’t Care About Us: A Civic Leader Speaks the Unspoken

By Rev. Richard

I’m writing this not just as a tenant, not just as a disabled man, but as someone who served this city with everything I had. And what I got in return was silence, retaliation, and betrayal.

Over the last three to six months, I ran a one-man campaign demanding an audit of the Springfield Housing Authority. I sent two letters to the mayor, two letters to the city council subcommittees, and one to the president of the council. Only one person responded and even she never followed up like she said she would. I reached out to state agencies. Nothing. No one took serious action.

Yet at the same time, 60 people signed my petition. That’s 60 people who understand what I’m saying is real. People who still have a conscience. People who are watching this unfold.

But let me be clear: this is bigger than just housing.

Then, in 2019, a Puerto Rican man assaulted me. Later in 2022, an associate threatened to kill me until I invoked my right to defend myself. When I did, he turned the camera on me, just like I had recorded his friend in 2019, assaulting me. His rage wasn’t just personal. It was retaliatory. He wanted revenge because I exposed the truth, and because both men shared the same first name: Luis, a name that means “famous warrior”. And suddenly, anyone in the community named Luis took offense and led a campaign, siding with him out of blind loyalty.

"Luis," who recorded me and later showed up in court in 2022 pretending to be the victim, wearing a collared shirt and tucked-in jeans, using those visual performance tricks that play to the bias of the courtroom, told the judge I was acting like a monster. The white judge, who lived in the suburbs and had no real understanding of Springfield’s street politics or racial tensions, ruled that I was guilty without summoning me to court. He imposed a constructive eviction, forcing me into homelessness for two weeks.

Now here’s the deeper hypocrisy: this all happened during the Trump–Biden election season, and I firmly believe I was punished because I used the term “Latino white supremacist.” But was I wrong?

On October 12, 2022, President Joe Biden called for a Los Angeles city councilmember to resign after she was caught on tape calling a colleague’s Black son a “little monkey.”
Biden calls for LA councilwoman to resign after racist remarks  

If the President of the United States can call out racism at the municipal level, why couldn’t the Executive Director of the Springfield Housing Authority, a Black woman and daughter of a civil rights activist, do the same? Is it because she’s in the mayor’s circle? Is she afraid to hold a powerful faction of Puerto Rican tenants accountable, even when they weaponize whiteness?

If so, then let it be said clearly: silence in the face of anti-Blackness is complicity.
And if she is a Black woman defending white supremacist behavior, whether it comes from a white man or a Brown one, then she is no different from those who practice it openly.

But how did we even get here?

While I was living in public housing, a white woman, a classic Karen named Kathleen, told the public that I had choked her. She spread that story like wildfire. But when I looked at the police report, she had said no such thing under oath. She knew it wasn’t true, but the damage was already done.

This is how white supremacy survives: it passes the knife to whoever’s willing to hold it. The same people who once stood beside us in struggle now weaponize whiteness when it suits them. Brown, when it’s time to collect solidarity. White, when it’s time to dominate.

That is not justice. That is betrayal.

I was left suicidal. Depressed. Barely able to function. Where were the so-called allies?

When I told a State Representative, Carlos Gonzalez, about what happened, he said “Sorry that happened to you,” and walked away. That broke my heart. I didn’t chase him. I’ve carried that silence since 2019.

And what about the daughter of a civil rights icon? When a Black man was publicly called a monkey by the Pueto Rican tenants he lived among, she shrugged and said there was nothing she could do.

As the late great Michael Jackson once sang: But if Martin Luther was living
He wouldn't let this be, no, no, no.....

I’ve been on boards. I’ve worked with city councilors. I’ve sat at the table, showed up for my community, and given years of my life to civic service. And yet, one of these leaders once told me I was wrong to feel suicidal, because, in his words, “Black folks don’t do that.” That’s what he said. As if mental anguish, PTSD, and despair aren’t real when you're Black. I guess he hasn’t read the studies, because there’s a rising epidemic of suicide among young Black men in America right now. Study finds spike in suicide rates for Black adolescents, young adults in 2021

You can’t tell me to be quiet about my trauma just because I’m Black. You can’t silence a wound by pretending it’s not there. That kind of thinking kills us, and it nearly killed me.

Meanwhile, over the years, a new city councilor showed more empathy than all the others combined.  And another, who I once believed in, still hasn’t reached out.

This is not just about me. This is about what it means to be disabled, Black, and honest in a city that doesn't want to face its demons.

I carry a sacred duty to speak this truth:
White supremacy is the most powerful, most adaptable force in this world. And now it has infiltrated every layer: Black, Brown, judicial, municipal. It uses whoever it can. It discards whoever it wants.

But I will not be discarded.
I am not going anywhere.
And my testimony is now part of the public record.

If this city continues ignoring me, so be it. But two years from now, someone else will pick up this case. Someone will see the record. And they’ll know I never stopped fighting.

 
What You Can Do:
✅ Read. Share. Spread this truth.
✅ Demand that your elected officials respond.
✅ Add your voice to mine, because they’re counting on us staying silent.

They don’t care about us.
But we do.

In power and in truth,

Rev. Richard

Filed as Addendum to the Petition to Audit the Springfield Housing Authority
July 20, 2025

This statement is written under Heaven’s command and submitted into the public record as part of the civic audit demand against corruption, whitewashing, and racial silencing in Springfield.

Filed in full awareness of the cost — and with no retraction.