“It is wonderful that we care,” he said, but it’s wrong to imply that this is the first time council and others have been interested in this topic.Additionally in the Enquirer Blog post about the meeting, Young's comments were described as this:
People were deluded, he said, into thinking they would hear something new tonight.This meeting was nothing but a show. It was a stunt to gain attention and make people believe that Smitherman and Winburn are doing something for black people. It was also a political tactic. The most brilliant aspect was to use the "black on black crime" terminology in the media. This gives Winburn something to appeal to the conservative, mostly White voters, that Republicans rely on for votes. Both Winburn and Smitherman have built narrowly defined voting blocks. Winburn's has more of a Coalition than Smitherman, so he needs to appeal to multiple angles of this issue.
No matter what, they got their media attention (yes including me). That gives them a slight boost to their reelection efforts. Each have to continue to walk the tight-rope of appealing to both Republicans and the Black Community. Neither one will ever be able to totally rely on Republican votes alone, so they must play this game and it is sickening.
Quimbob over at Blogging Isn't Cool has more on the 'Meeting.'