Cee Williams, Former Erie County Poet Laureate and founder of Poet's Hall speaks truth to power.
Poet Cee Williams testified at Erie City Council:
I'm not a structural engineer, but I can count. One hundred people a day use the bridge. Two hundred pedestrian trips a day for the last seven years is more than 500,000 journeys without a reported incident. Five hundred thousand journeys speaks volumes to me of the safety of this bridge as a pedestrian walkway. And it can be made safer.
I am not a historian, but I am a student of history and I understand the effects of credit rationing, blacklisting, redlining and disinvestment on Erie's Eastside and it's correlation to being listed as the worst city in America for people who look like me.
I understand what it's like to see the least of us treated as if we don't exist. I want to live in a city that works for the least of us. The people that use that Viaduct use it to get to work, to get to school, to visit friends and family and sometimes just to watch a train go by. They are the least of us.
Investment in the Viaduct is a bridge to a city that works for all of us. A Public Hearing shows a willingness to listen to all of us. To be heard, to be counted, matters. We Matter. Delay the Demolition. Let us have our say and show us time has come for CHANGE, for HOPE. Show us that this administration is willing to embrace the Eastside's desperate need for both.