Considering Council Candidate Cornell

From John Robinson's post about Greensboro City Council candidates' web presences (and absences), I had noticed that Jorge Cornell had among the most impressive online content available for citizens to check out. I wasn't the only one to notice this; Jeffrey Sykes and Ed Cone both shared their observations on their respective blogs.

Sue Polinsky asked some questions, some of which had already been answered by the News & Record, but from her questions, I started thinking about my own thoughts and questions related to Jorge Cornell. I hope Ed didn't mind the rather long comment(s) I ended up posting at his website. It made me realize that, except for one June post about "Driving Miss Daisy," I hadn't posted anything on my own blog in months. I didn't set out to go on as long as I did, and once I did, I probably should have just done as I'm going to do now and posted my comments here:


I've listened to a couple of the posted press conferences, and Jorge Cornell seems to feel that the organization he leads here in North Carolina, the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation, and its local members have been unfairly targeted by anti-gang law enforcement. Apparently, the ALKQN has a very contradictory history that bounces between the extremes of murderous drug lords and sincerely interested community organizers. I guess the question is how sincere Cornell and his local Latin King followers are about focusing on the positive and turning their backs on any violent and drug-based temptations. I would like to see Cornell address these issues in great detail, particularly since a significant number of the organization's/gang's members (on the national level--I'm not sure about locally) have embraced horrible, indefensible acts against fellow human beings. I appreciated that Cornell attended and spoke out against domestic violence, sharing that he had witnessed this problem within his own family. (I don't think there was any posted video of his comments, which I would have liked to have watched.) The Troublemaker posted some questions and comments about Cornell in a July 1st post (July 1, 2008). (When you look up "Jorge Cornell" online, the link listed at the top takes you to the Troublemaker website.) If Cornell has made mistakes but has every intention of putting any negativity from his past behind him and moving in a positive direction, he deserves a chance to prove himself. Electing him onto the City Council right now may or may not be too early.

Wikipedia offers this: "But their "apparent contradictions", the Latin Kings may argue, can be better understood when viewed through the lens of their teachings. Once a member of the Almighty Latin King Nation, according to the "Latin King Manifesto", a member naturally passes through three stages of consciousness:

(1) the Primitive Stage, wherein the neophyte member is expected to be immature and to be involved in such activities as gang-banging and being a street warrior without the full consciousness of Kingism ;

(2) the Conservative or Mummy Stage, which is where a member tires of the street gang life but is still accepting of life as it has been taught to him by the existing system that exploits all people of color, dehumanizes them, and maintains them under the conditions and social yoke of slavery;

and (3) the New King Stage, where the member recognizes the need for a revolution of the "mind". According to the Manifesto, "The New King is the end product of complete awareness, perceiving three-hundred and sixty degrees of enlightenment; his observations are free and independent; his thoughts are not clouded by any form of prejudice...For him there are no horizons between races, sexes and senseless labels", including gang labels for recognition. The New King no longer views the rival warriors as the cause of his ills and seeks world unity for the sake of humanization and freedom for all the "Oppressed Third World Peoples".

Therefore, as appropriately expressed by their own teachings, a great majority of Latin Kings live a criminalistic lifestyle while a select few seek to better their communities and fight against social oppression and injustices."

Is Cornell in the New King Stage? Can he be a powerful voice in encouraging young people to bypass the Primitive Stage? If he can be a voice of positive inspiration for young people, I wish him the very best, and if his intentions and personal pursuits are honorable and positive, I wish him great all-around success. Perhaps Cornell can enlighten us about his perspective on all this.