Growth is painful

While I was at Star Island, I discovered through spotty-service email that some assertions I made on previous blog entries were interpreted in a different way than I intended, and my perspective has evolved as a result.

I have referred to our City Council representatives as upper middle class. While this is, in fact, an assumption, one that I cannot quantify with data, it does accurately reflect the general east side perception of council, and I have a hypothesis as to why. In our town, everyone in the city votes for all five wards, rather than each ward voting on its own representative. When I brought a petition up and down this road to express a need for a solution to pedestrian problems on Swan Lake Avenue, I was told again and again by signers that Council would never do anything about it because the other four wards would never vote for a council member who actually came from the lower class side of the tracks and could prioritize something the trailer park contingent needs.

Right or wrong, this is the perception.

When I have referred to them as upper middle class, I haven’t meant it as an insult or as a suggestion that they have always been upper middle class. Upper middle class exemplifies the American Dream and I’ve sucked into that ideal as much as anyone else in this country. So it is with hope, rather than criticism, that I learn that City Councilors have not always been what I (and others on my side of town) perceive them to be now.

I don’t want their tax returns. My perception is one of culture rather than cut and dry financial definitions. And, that said, my perception is evolving.

Ultimately, I think it’s hard for anyone to represent something that they aren’t right now. The challenges faced by each generation differ vastly, so what poverty looks like now is different than what it looked like forty years ago. The needs that younger families have are different than they were. Costs of childcare, the dissipation of multigenerational extended families staying together, the distance to which one must individually commute for a job and securing transportation to get there, the job skills necessary to flourish in today’s world - those are all different.

So I would like to take a moment to recognize and appreciate the fact that most, maybe all, of our councilors came from different worlds than what they live in now, and that they do continue to work hard to the best of their abilities. I recognize that none of them necessarily came from money, and I would also like to highlight my belief that their collective intention includes serving the lower classes.

But I stand by the belief that the challenges they faced when their children were young were different than the ones faced by families today, and that sometimes it is extra difficult to see those needs clearly when you are no longer in the thick of it.