“Let’s fix this”
That was the theme echoed by State Sen. Juan Barnett of Jasper County as he spoke to members of the Marion County Democratic Party during last Thursday’s third annual Beans-N-Greens Fundraiser held at the Columbia Expo Center.
After an invocation and welcome from the Rev. Darrick McGowan, the crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance and sang “America” before Minister Jerry McCleod blessed the meal.
After eating, the crowd heard from Barnett, who addressed local party members and the nation as a whole in his speech. Barnett, an Army veteran, served 15 years as mayor of the city of Heidelberg before moving on to represent District 34 in the Mississippi Senate.
“I love history,” he said. “Not for reading about what happened yesterday, but to try not to make the same mistakes that happened yesterday.”
Barnett spoke about the need to serve in the community.
“I am one who believes in the need to serve,” he said. “In God’s book, it speaks of the good and faithful servant. Nowhere can it be found that you should wait on somebody to serve you. If what I say offends anyone, I apologize, but I’m still going to say exactly how I feel. A lot of us, whether we find ourselves as elected officials or clergy or whatever our position in leadership, we sit and wait on people to serve us. We miss the opportunity to show how important it is to get up and get out and serve people. Be servants. As a Democratic party, we have to get back to being servants to the people.”
Barnett told the crowd they had the chance to fix problems beginning with the local parties getting people involved.
“Let’s fix this,” he said. “We’ve got some work to do. For instance, we don’t share information with each other. If we can’t communicate with each other, how can we communicate with anybody else? How can our message be effective if we cannot be effective with each other? Whenever one finger gets pointed forward, another gets pointed back. If we don’t communicate, we can’t get our message out. We need to get our message out.”
Barnett said that the Democrats in Mississippi needed to find innovative ways to help businesspeople.
“We need to change our message as a Democratic party,” he said. “We need to listen to our young people. We need to turn things around in Mississippi and encourage our college graduates to stay here.”
Barnett also spoke of party unity and community unity as he continued.
“The reason we don’t agree with each other is that we don’t even know each other,” he said. “Maybe we should find out what we share in common. We need to become the selfless party instead of the selfish party. We can fix this. Let’s fix this”
Last Thursday’s events ended with McGowan recognizing guests and elected officials and drawings for door prizes from local businesses conducted by Brenda Shields. About 100 people attended.
