EDITORIAL: What Would Mike Van Leesten Do?
EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL: What Would Mike Van Leesten Do?
But, the bigger void may be what Van Leesten would have done during times like these.
Van Leesten was the quiet leader who brought people together - one-on-one.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTThe secret and highly successful technique was the breakfast - such a simple strategy of sitting down with people, hearing them out and sharing thoughts, ideas and passions — things that could help be a solution to the problem.
Van Leesten had the “street cred” both with the young black man and with the corporate CEO.
He would have helped guide the Mayor to better choices. Make him understand that everyone wants to live in a city that is safe and has opportunities.
He would have suggested to the first-term Attorney General on how to build credibility with the minority community, suggesting that standing repeatedly with a wall of police officers and discussing how he was going to conduct an independent review might not be credible with those optics.
He would have rallied the silent business community to step forward and urged them to leverage their talents and resources to help all communities. He would have cajoled, pleaded, urged, appealed, and maybe even embarrassed them to open up their checkbooks because it was in the best interest of the community and their business.
He would have met with young men and women of color and listened to them.
How can we guess what Mike would have done? Because he did it for more than half a century.
Who wants to be the next Mike Van Leesten - we sure could use one or two.