My Redacted Life: Chapter 14 (Cont._4)

The last of the winter snow came in 1972 and things were as normal as they would ever get again. Technology had reached its peak. There wasn’t much more that could be done. They had introduced something called a “handheld calculator,” the HP-35. We couldn’t think of much use for it. Imagine people walking around distracted adding numbers from something in their hands. It would be both dangerous and a waste of time. Besides, it cost $395. It was nuts.

Yep. Technology had peaked, no doubt about that.

I encountered my first case of being what I call “neighborhood filicide.” It wouldn’t be my last. It happened, by chance, in one of our major cities. The powers had finally decided that neighborhood preservation was a superior concept to neighborhood demolition. I can’t imagine why it took them so long.

At any rate, we had gotten a grant approved for funds to reconstruct a street in a large minority neighborhood spreading out around a major neighborhood school. The street scheduled for reconstruction connected the school and the local city park, still partially segregated but much used by the neighborhood.

It was a good project, a simple one, much needed, particularly the sidewalks planned to replace the open, trash-filled ditches that the kids had to navigate daily. A group of neighborhood activists had helped gather data for, and complete, the grant application.

As I say, it was a good project, eagerly awaited. That’s why there was such a surprise when all hell broke loose.

It seemed, all of a sudden, that this wasn’t the street the neighborhood wanted upgraded. Folks wanted one a block over fixed instead.

This was odd, because the street a block over didn’t connect anything. It made no sense to change the plan. Grant approval had relied on the benefits to the entire neighborhood. A tempest was beginning to rage, though.  The situation called for a public hearing.

That turned out to be, as many public hearings are, a fiasco. A local “leader” dominated the hearing with loud denunciations of a city that, for reasons only known to the white power structure and its neighborhood pawns, sought to destroy a long-standing and vibrant community. This was racial genocide at its worst, he implied.

Other leaders of the neighborhood, who had helped with the grant, and who had come to the hearing to support the original plan, sat in thunderous silence with heads downcast.

Oddly, it turned into my first professional encounter in which opinions grew from feelings and not from facts, a situation that works better in religion than in government.

What caused the debacle? The reason turned out to be simple one, one that would be repeated in my career multiple times in varied situations. The issue wasn’t neighborhood revitalization. It wasn’t racial. It was economic. Guess who owned three or four shabby rent houses on the “preferred” street? Guess who gained the most trust and prevailed?

Today, there is a crumbling street, with weed-choked sidewalks, serving nothing but a couple derelict houses in a minority neighborhood in our state. A block over, kids still walk along, through, and over, ditches filled with broken bottles, needles, and less appetizing trash, to get to the city park.

Sometimes, those who knowingly do harm to our neighborhoods and other institutions, are the ones who should love them the most.