Facebook
Fark
Digg
Reddit
Stumble2020 Vision:
Pastor: If connected, West Las Vegas can thrive
Pastor S.S. Rogers envisions a West Las Vegas with thriving businesses and in which the community works together to deter violence.
Sunday, Dec. 27, 2009 | 2 a.m.
What's Your Vision?
We would hope West Las Vegas would be more like Summerlin. We want to have businesses, black-owned businesses, restaurants and even shopping centers in our remote area.
The F Street Coalition is looking at this, the West Side Chamber of Commerce and Las Vegas are looking at what progress we can make on bringing the west side together with downtown. We want a community that is viable, that is livable, and one where any person can live without fear.
We know there is violence everywhere, but we want to eliminate that violence by working with schools and churches, police, the NAACP and other community groups to deter some of these violent activities. We’re trying to get to kids at an early age, kindergarten and elementary schools, and where there are problems with children at an early age, you need to catch it then.
We will be able to deter this violence by working with parents. Deter violence and tell them there’s a better way than a life of violence.
I’m a 49-year resident of Clark County. I came here in 1960. To see the environment now, it’s a lot different. We need to return to the concept that parents, students, neighbors collectively together work to end these activities.
And we want to let our youth know we love them and are here to support them. They need to know that if they don’t want to be involved in these activities, they can come to us.
They should know they can speak to me in confidence. Because now there’s a culture of fear. Too often, when information was given to police about crimes, there were leaks. That has to stop, and we need to rebuild confidence.
We need jobs for underprivileged children, jobs for students who want to work and can work.
Some of them can’t get a job because of prior involvement with the law. But once they have served their time, they should be able to give back to their community that they have taken from or destroyed. They need to be able to prove themselves and say “I’m willing to come back to my community and be a good parent and give back.”
If the business community really wants to do something to help the community be stronger by 2020, they’ll network through our churches to find workers. We can provide good working people. We see these good people every Sunday.
S.S. Rogers is pastor of Greater Mt. Sinai Missionary Baptist Church in Las Vegas, and a member of the F Street Coalition, which sought to reopen F Street, a main thoroughfare connecting West Las Vegas to downtown.
Discussion: comments so far…
Comments are moderated by Las Vegas Sun editors. Our goal is not to limit the discussion, but rather to elevate it. Comments should be relevant and contain no abusive language. Comments that are off-topic, vulgar, profane or include personal attacks will be removed. Full comments policy. Additionally, we now display comments from trusted commenters by default. Those wishing to become a trusted commenter need to verify their identity or sign in with Facebook Connect to tie their Facebook account to their Las Vegas Sun account. For more on this change, read our story about how it works and why we did it.
Only trusted comments are displayed on this page. Untrusted comments have expired from this story.
No trusted comments have been posted.
Post a comment
Most Popular
- Viewed
- Discussed
- E-mailed
- Superstar Whitney Houston dies at 48
- Two dead after accident in downtown Las Vegas
- Instant Analysis: Debating whether UNLV should continue series with San Diego State
- Police looking for man in white Ford Explorer
- Dining Guide: 2012 Valentine’s Day options in Las Vegas
- Four people injured in car accident
- Color from the scene at Thomas & Mack Center: We have a wire job! Rebels win, and Louie Armstrong sings!
- Blog: Justin Hawkins’ steal seals UNLV’s thrilling 65-63 victory against San Diego State
- After Nevada and Florida wins, Mitt Romney trying to prove he’s ‘severely conservative’ to CPAC base
- UNLV makes key plays down stretch to hold off San Diego State 65-63
Blogs
The Kats Report
Color from scene at Thomas & Mack: We have a wire job! Rebels win, and Louie Armstrong sings!
South Point owner Michael Gaughan's take on 'Vegas Stripped': 'I'll give it an 8' (4 Comments)
Author relishes writing the life story of ‘larger-than-life’ Oscar Goodman (3 Comments)
Elsewhere
Landowner: All roads could lead to Uxbridge casino
Revel reveals smoke-free casino opening
Cirque du Soleil show in Sands China casino to close this month
Meet the woman behind Sheldon Adelson
The Sun
Locally owned and independent for more than 50 years.
What a great idea, we can let the gang members have a direct route to our tourists.
ROSEVILLE, Calif. -- Safeway officials said they are scratching their heads after a bizarre set of circumstances left two Roseville stores unlocked over the Christmas holiday.
Even more surprising, police confirm nothing was stolen even though shoppers had gotten inside.
Police told KCRA 3 that two different Safeway stores in Roseville were left unlocked on Christmas Eve.
One Safeway store was located on Pleasant Grove at Roseville Parkway and the other store was located on Sunrise and Kirby streets.
Police said when they showed up at 3:30 p.m. Friday they found that people had been taking items and leaving money at the registers.
"A customer, from inside the store, said there was a lot of customers in the store. We went over there. There was actually a report of customers leaving money on the counter, purchasing merchandise," said Lt. Mark Toupin, with Roseville police.
Police said there was no looting and no theft.
===============================
Question: what kind of community will host this kind of communal attitude?
===============================
Dear Preacher S.S. Rogers:
When your community can mirror this type of "spirit" - you will be welcome into ours.
Everyone deserves a chance.
It amazes me how many people think sarcasm disguises racism.
We are ALL the same.
Everyone from everywhere, All the same.
God made Man in his own image, go find a mirror and tell how he's looking today.
I'm really disturbed by the Pastor saying he wanted West Las Vegas to thrive with "black owned" businesses. If I was a true community activist and wanted to see a socially run down area of las Vegas prosper, I wouldn't care about the race, creed, or religion of the business owners. What I would care about would be the revival of the community. I am truly disturbed by racial prejudice of any kind. If a white man stated he only wanted summerlin businesses to be run by white owners, he would be crucified, and justifiably so. What ever happened to Martin Luther Kings wisdom and words that we all are equal? Until we ALL believe that, west las Vegas will continue to struggle as a community, because of people on both sides of the fence
West Las Vegas has had many many years to thrive and guess what, it never happened. You wanna know why? Because the people in west las vegas are scarey and no one wants to be there except the scarey people.
Apparently, there are Americans out there who are willing to do or to learn the jobs that the business community has said for years that Americans "won't do." Let's get these Americans hired and into the labor force and off of the welfare system.
Is the business community willing to hire them? Do these people really want to work? Let's see what happens. I hope that the Pastor will keep us informed of the progress.
Passdoor sez: "If the business community really wants to do something to help the community be stronger by 2020, they'll network through our churches to find workers."
Always preach inclusion. So non-believers don't belong or cannot participate?
Um yeah, okay. It's a lot easier to get to downtown & the strip from West LV than it is from Summerlin.
West LV is THE GHETTO, Summerlin is suburbia.
The problem lies within your slum, and it's nobodies fault but "your people's".
Las Vegas will never be anything other than a town to lose money and get drunk in if we keep having neighborhoods like "West Las Vegas" that are separate from the rest of the city, physically and mentally.
1) Give ALL citizens of LV a good education at all levels.
2) Stop the racism. Just stop. This is 2009, not 1959. Get a clue.
3) There are a lot of neighborhoods in many parts of Las Vegas I feel "scarey" in, not just Westside. Wonder why THAT is???