Word count: 913 | Reading time: 4 min read
Pretzel Logic
This is a story about contrasts. In Philadelphia, Mayor John F. Street is neck-deep in his biggest transportation initiative to date — removing the baggageof his brother from an airport baggage-handling contract.
In Washington, D.C., Mayor Anthony Williams is dealing with his own transportation issue. Williams is hosting the Corporate Council on Africa’s (CCA) biennial trade summit — an event designed to transport billions of dollars in international trade between Africa and the U.S.
If the D.C. event sounds vaguely familiar, there is a reason.
The CCA, representing all 53 African nations and hundreds of businesses small and large, last convened in Philadelphia two years ago.
Prior to the Philadelphia gathering, CCA PresidentStephen Hayes said that trade relations fostered among attendees — who included government officials from nearly every African nation and high-level U.S. trade officials all ready to help businesses wheel and deal — could have resulted in more than $1 billion in trade between Africa and Philadelphia-area companies.
So, what’s the contrast?
When the CCA summit was held in Philadelphia, Street was a no-show, pissing off African heads of state, event organizers and even the Secret Service, which was left cooling its heels when Street failed to arrive as promised to an event honoring the prime minister of Cote d’Ivoire. And now Street is risking a lawsuit from his own brother, over a million-dollar no-bid contract at an airport that might have been a major hub to Africa had the mayor not been asleep at the wheel.
Williams, on the other hand, not only embraced the concept, but attended Tuesday night’s opening dinner and gave a welcoming speech telling attendees just how important their presence is to the city and the nation.
The contrast is neither small nor unnoticed.
“It’s fair to say [Street] missed the ball,” Hayes told me back in December, as Williams’ administration was full-throttle into planning for the summit.
“I think the mayor totally snubbed it,” said Hayes, adding that it’s a huge loss for the city.
“We had something that could really have helped the inner city quite a bit with innovative planning,” Hayes said. “It was a program that could have really benefited Philadelphia. I don’t think that key economic leaders grasped the importance of this program until it was too late. I think that they visualized this as conference/convention, not as a long-term business opportunity. As the implications of the event got closer, they realized that it was a bit too late to start.”
By contrast, “Washington gets it,” Hayes said. “We had a very good meeting with their chief of staff and key economic people; they will be very heavily involved in this, what companies need to be there, matching up with African companies. In order to have successful follow-up, you need to plan it before the conference.”
Perhaps Washington gets it because Washingtonians are more used to dealing with international affairs.
“We are, in addition to being the nation’s capital, a host city to hundreds of embassies,” said Tony Bullock, spokesperson for Mayor Williams. “The official representatives of so many governments are here. That makes it all the more important. We view the consulates and ambassadors and the people here represented by the CCA as our constituents, even if they can’t vote for us.”
That’s one reason.
Hayes offered another hunch as to Street’s costly indifference.
Hayes knew that Street was a disciple of Rev. Leon Sullivan, the late Philadelphia preacher who became a member of General Motors’ board of directors and, through his “Sullivan Principal,” engineered an economic boycott of South Africa that eventually led to the downfall of apartheid.
After talking to people in Philadelphia, Hayes said he concluded that Street “keeps seeing [the CCA] as competition to [the Leon H.] Sullivan Summit,” an annual gathering of an organization building health, educational and financial infrastructures in Africa.
“He’s never said that,” Hayes said of the mayor. But “one or two people have said that [Sullivan] was a big part of [why Street snubbed CCA]. I do remember early on him asking me about Sullivan and asking if [CCA] competed. We weren’t competition. The Sullivan Summit is very different and complementary to what we do — a broad-based, international business summit. We concentrate on economic development. The Sullivan Summit is an important, people-to-people program that brings African cities and U.S. cities together.”
Both are worthy programs benefiting Philadelphia and Africa. They are not mutually exclusive.
I have tried, ever since Philadelphia hosted the CCA in late fall 2001, to find out just why Street blew off a summit that would have helped so many.
One close adviser told me that Street didn’t come because he’d been given a secret warning about possible terror activities — a warning so secret that even the Secret Service wasn’t informed. Several Street spokespeople have been dumbfounded by his absence and unable to give an excuse.
So as the mayor fiddles with his brother while the city burns through jobs and resources — all during an election year — it’s a pretty good time to find out from Street why he dropped the ball on this and ponder for a minute what we lost as a result.
“Philadelphia clearly has a better infrastructure [than Washington] for trade, which makes it so frustrating,” Hayes said in December. “Philadelphia could be the major port for Africa. If there was planning beforehand, Philadelphia could have been so far ahead of the game.”
