Community advocates influence Gulfport, Mississippi, development plans

The city hearing in Gulfport, Mississippi, seemed to include all the elements of responsive local government.

There was the full, seven-member City Council sitting at a semicircular dais in the front of the chamber. There were citizens from across Mississippi’s second-largest city filling the rows of seats. There was a city-contracted attorney and a consultant with stacks of papers at hand. And there was a microphone where one person after another spoke for several minutes at a time about the city’s plan to spend federal community development funds.

But one key element was missing from the July hearing. No stenographer was taking notes, and no official recording was being made. That did not go unnoticed by one Gulfport native who knows a thing or two about how government is supposed to work. With 11 years of experience as a state legislator, Sonya Williams Barnes, now Mississippi policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, was not about to let the voices of the people of Gulfport go unheard.

“Who’s recording?” Williams Barnes recalled asking. “I don’t see anyone recording. How are you collecting these comments and these verbal submissions? I don’t see a stenographer here.”

The consultant hired by the city “stood up and she said: ‘Well, we don’t have to have a stenographer. The federal government doesn’t require us to have the stenographer.’”

Williams Barnes responded. “I said, ‘But the federal government does require you to have public hearings in which you take into consideration the public comments that are being made and insert them into your final product.’ And to that, there was really no answer.”

The city’s only response, in fact, came just hours after the morning meeting, and it was not encouraging for anyone committed to community input.

That was when officials publicly posted Gulfport’s proposed grant application to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provides funding to expand economic and housing opportunities, primarily for residents with low and moderate incomes. Despite federal rules requiring public discussion of how municipalities intend to use grant funds, the application contained not one suggestion offered by any citizen who had spoken at either of two city hearings.

Williams Barnes didn’t waste time complaining. She took action.

Within days, she and several community leaders with track records of advocating for the city’s historically least-heard people had convened a public meeting of their own. More than a hearing, it was a daylong workshop, open to all and held in Ward 1. They got word out to local radio stations, on social media and through their networks of organizers and community leaders. More than 160 people showed up, engaging in strategic planning, breakout sessions and spirited discussions on how best to use the grants dispensed to the city under HUD’s Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships programs.

The meeting was a major success. Not only did four of the seven City Council members – invited individually by Williams Barnes – attend, but the citizen recommendations became the basis of a comprehensive report, bolstered by specific suggestions on how federal monies might best be used to support community initiatives throughout the city.

‘What it takes’

Spurred by Williams Barnes, Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes agreed to present the citizen commentary and recommendations to the Council for a vote. On Aug. 14, the Council voted unanimously to include the report in its proposal to HUD.

Speaking at the August Council meeting, Gulfport Councilman Robert “R. Lee” Flowers – who like five of the seven City Council members is a white man in a city that is more than 37% Black – was contrite.

“I appreciate the fact that the community took it on themselves,” Flowers said. “I’m embarrassed, I don’t mind saying it. Sonya, thank you very much for the effort in doing that … you’ve worked hard on that.

“That’s what it takes to make sure we’re addressing this need throughout the city. Rarely do the people that I represent come downtown to express those concerns, because they’re busy. Their needs are there, their desire is there, but we have to go out and get these testimonies. That’s tough. That takes desire on the part of the elected representatives to make certain that we are going out and doing our job. I would like to see that more going forward on this, because there are needs that are not represented.”

The outcome was a significant victory for the local community leaders and for the SPLC, which is increasingly taking its fight for social justice, poverty alleviation and equality to the local level by marshaling the skills and knowledge of citizens who know their communities best.

The efforts in Gulfport are “absolutely the model for how the SPLC can continue to stand with community and support their interests at the local level to achieve wins,” said SPLC Regional Policy Director Shay Farley. “Part of the rationale is that state legislatures meet only three months out of a year, whereas city and county governments meet weekly or biweekly and the levers of change are far more accessible at the local level, especially with community involvement.”

‘A heart for the people’

The SPLC model for change starts with people like Williams Barnes, well known and trusted in Gulfport, where her family owns a respected mortuary business, and builds through partnerships with community advocates who have the savvy to know who on the local level is going to be responsive, Farley said. It is part of an intentional evolution over the past few years by the SPLC to not only expand its focus to include local engagement but to then connect all the threads needed to foster change – from policy research to funding levers to advocacy in state legislatures all the way up to Washington, D.C.

Community advocates in Gulfport say it is no surprise that Williams Barnes knows what levers to pull.

“Not only is she from Gulfport, but she has this place in her bones,” said Ronnie Matthew Harris, a local community advocate and international development professional. Harris is one of the community leaders who joined with the SPLC to organize the community workshop. “She not only has a heart for catalytic change, but she has a heart for the people.”

Born in the city, Harris returned during the pandemic after decades in Chicago. Working remotely on international development, he founded a volunteer initiative called Go Gulfport, which advocates for better governance and sustainable urban planning. He is also exploring running for City Council.

“People trust her, and not just people that are on her side of her political persuasion,” Harris said.

Such trust, he said, is what made it possible that “with Sonya at the helm, working for Southern Poverty Law Center, we led an effort to have our community come together and influence the city’s process.”

Controversy over development

Of course, in Gulfport, the work is far from done. There is no guarantee the city’s proposal will be accepted by HUD, and even less that the city will allocate the money in accordance with its plan. Past is often prologue, and contrition cannot mask the fact that Gulfport has a long and well-documented history of allocating federal development funding unequally.

While six out of the city’s seven wards include qualifying low- and moderate-income areas eligible for the HUD funding, over the past 20 years the bulk of the monies, $9.6 million all told, have been earmarked for just two – Wards 1 and 3. City records show that some of the money earmarked for even those areas in 2020 was used instead to improve drainage citywide. Ward 1 includes the city’s central business district.

Since 2021, the city has been embroiled in controversy over how and whether it is using much of the HUD funding. City leaders have stockpiled more than $3 million of community development grants, seeking to reallocate it to bolster a major city project, an urban renewal initiative designated in 2018 and known as the Quarters. The area includes sections of the city that are eligible for HUD funding but also abuts the central business district.

Williams Barnes and other community advocates say such improvements are concentrated in more-affluent areas of the city, while more-deserving areas are neglected.

“The brutal honesty is the city wants to develop this particular area because it’s adjacent to the central business district,” Harris said.

“I get it, I do,” he said. “But the injustice in it is that low-to-moderate households still pay taxes. They contribute to the funds that end up in City Hall on the backs or the sweat and brow of these Black people, these Black neighborhoods, these poverty-stricken neighborhoods, that are not necessarily benefiting from these funds.”

Despite the ongoing challenges, the workshop and the adoption of community recommendations marked a significant shift in how Gulfport residents, particularly those from historically underserved areas, are influencing local government decisions, Williams Barnes said.

“We’ve shown that when people come together, their voices can lead to meaningful change,” she said. “This is just the beginning, and it proves that our community’s determination can pave the way for a more equitable future.”

Image at top: Members of the Alpha Kappa Alpha and Delta Sigma Theta sororities volunteered at the registration desk for the community meeting held at the Gaston Point Community Center in Gulfport, Mississippi, on July 27, 2024. From left: Gwendolyn Dunlap of Delta Sigma Theta; Sonya Williams Barnes, the SPLC's Mississippi policy director; and Alesia Haynes, Tenyeka Gibson, Gayle Abrams and Ann Hardy of Alpha Kappa Alpha (Credit: SPLC).