"Urban Warfare"

Image credit: http://hattemharvest.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/downtown-newark-3a.jpg

GROUNDED GIRL (Cream in My Coffee):

I've started following the Mayor of Newark, NJ on Twitter and his director of communications. They have a mantra: "All eyes on Newark...". You get the sense that they close every meeting with that chant, like the football team on "Friday Night Lights": clear eyes full hearts can't lose.

I wrote this morning that I wondered what would happen if Seattle had the same approach-- all eyes, people, all eyes. The director of communications replied: "hmmm not the same".

She's absolutely right.

It's not.

Newark is battling a decades-long decline, caught in the shadow of New York on the wrong side of the tracks. Gangs, drugs, corners, lack of economic opportunity, flight, socio-economic chasms, welfare generations-- all the accumulated challenges of an East Coast urban center suffering the fall-out from the end of the industrial revolution.

Seattle is a bastion of new economy buzz. Comfy fleece, coffee elitism, and global warming chic. Nobody is judging our every move. We are not an underdog. Our racial history isn't the same as the east coast. It is white privilege central around here. Nobody is watching us except when we fuck up and shut down for two weeks in a snow storm or change our mind about naming a city park after a city where one of our citizens was recently convicted of murder. It's not life and death here.

Newark is struggling to stay afloat, engaged in the desperately hard work of urban transformation and salvation. "Of the top ten most important American fights, this is it. People don't realize that the soul of our nation is in jeopardy unless we come to grips with what's happening in our cities. And of all the cities -- I don't think America understands how much it needs Newark," said Mayor Booker in a 2008 Esquire magazine article. If Newark goes under, it takes a lot of lives with it. Our civic identities could not be more different.

It's the difference between private schools and public inner city schools. Are private school students in crisis? Not in the same way as kids whose families and schools don't have the cushion of resources to protect them. But the way those kids grow and develop matters, too. The questions of institutions versus individual still exist.

I went through the white-guilt phase in college, feeling like the only way to make a difference was to work in marginalized communities but wondering what value I, as a middle class intellectual white woman, could bring. I struggled with the cultural imperialism and unintentional racism factors. Until I realized that there was also work to be done within the communities where I had a leadership voice. I could bring awareness and expand pathways so it wouldn't be such a battle to breach the walls. I could advocate for diverse viewpoints and make connections. I could work to change the policies.

Seattle has problems. White privilege / economic security blinds you. We don't have the awareness, in general, to ask the questions because we haven't been forced to. Our new mayor and his coterie of idealistic young enviros certainly won't challenge that. (I wouldn't have an issue if their environmentalism also addressed issues of racism and classism but they're too fucking concerned with getting people to ride bikes & "micro-listening sessions" to ensure the "process" is "inclusive". Their agenda assumes and propagates an ethos of white privilege. It's the worst kind of navel-gazing.)

Wouldn't be amazing to have the perspective to ask the questions before it became a crisis? To make the connections between economic opportunity and civic engagement. To acknowledge the stress of limited opportunity and seek ways to broaden the life avenues for all instead of throwing bones of non-profit vendor programs that read well in magazines but don't actively work to lift people up. Wouldn't it be good to create a beloved community, a civic consciousness before we had to pick up pieces of a broken society? Could we use this civic space as a laboratory for success instead of waiting until we are coming from behind? And is that not also legitimate work?

"I care about how we live together in cities", says David Simon, the creator of "The Wire" in a Vice article (which may be the most thought-provoking piece I've read on urban America). I do, too. Seattle may not be crawling back from the abyss, but we are far from being our best. We live without an awareness. We act like we're still a pioneer town on the edge of the world. We do stupid shit like spend ten years arguing about a highway replacement and we make incomprehensible zoning decisions that seem more driven at forcing a utopian ideal rather than acknowledging human & economic realities. We have Rotary meetings about reducing gun violence instead of addressing the roots of gun violence, which have nothing (and in a way everything) to do with Rotary meetings. We are locked into at-large city council representation in a city that prides itself on its unique "neighborhood character". We have a Department of Neighborhoods that, in recent years, has become a funnel for grant money to non-profit organizations rather than actively working to build bridges and connections. I often wonder if anyone's heard of the concept of "best practices benchmarking" or maybe we're so convinced of our own special snowflakeness that we never look beyond our borders for inspiration. It's not earth shattering but it's impacting the world all the same. And what would happen if our civil servants and our citizens started behaving with an awareness of that? Is that not civil consciousness?

So, no, Newark & Seattle don't have a lot in common. In Newark, they're battling urban decay, people worn down by years of marginalization and neglect, by a lack of opportunity. In Seattle we need to start by admitting that we're an urban area. We harbor a smug overconfidence in our numbing perception of homogeneity. We eschew diversity, whether political or socio-economic, even though that diversity certainly exists. I love what Mayor Booker and his team and Newark's residents are working to accomplish in Newark, but Newark isn't my battle (yet?). I'm digging where I stand. Seattle has things to learn from Newark-- like having a civic consciousness. Newark could learn some things from Seattle. We may have radically different demographics but we're engaged in the same task-- making systems work for the improvement rather than the frustration of civil society.

Howie P.S.: More on Mayor Cory Booker here.