by Bill Shelton in Politics
Posted on April 1, 2008 at 9:47 am
Last Modified on April 1, 2008 at 9:48 am
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When a region’s climate changes over long periods, its ecosystems change as well. Woodlands can become grasslands, tundra or desert. This process involves prolonged conflict between differing plant and animal groups, and between how they change their environment by living and propagating. Even if they were conscious, they would not see themselves as at war, but rather merely doing what they can to survive.
This natural process greatly resembles a social process long at work in our city. The climatic changes are predominately economic forces. The conflict looks like yuppie Barnies vs. townie Neanderthals. In fact, both characterizations are unfair, and the substance of the conflict is more complex. It is about culture, city government’s structure and conduct, how people make a living, and the nature of municipal political participation.
On the ground, the newcomers will eventually dominate the city’s political life. But if that is all that happens, Somerville will have lost a great deal. Its institutions may become more effective and efficient in their narrow purposes, but it will lose much of what made it a community.
“Community” is, to my mind, the most important thing to understand about what made mid-Twentieth Century Somerville so rare among American cities. That community shared a taken-for-granted understanding that what we have in common is more important than our differences.
The city’s relatively narrow range of ethnicity was a necessary, but nowhere near a sufficient, explanation for this. Rich networks of extended families, neighborhoods, churches, unions, fraternal organizations, youth sports, political clubs, and civic organizations intertwined to weave a strong and resilient fabric of community.
These relationships provided multiple ways for people to know, understand, and rely on each other. They fulfilled functions that, in their absence, now burden government and increase its costs. Through them, citizens guided the young, swiftly helped neighbors in need, resolved conflicts, and maintained security without being aware that they were doing anything special.
Old Somerville provided rites of passage for youth. If you treated others with respect, demonstrated loyalty, and fulfilled your responsibilities, you would gain living-wage employment, a decent home, a place in the community, and the respect of your neighbors. Every adult played a part in making this social contract work.
Few people were looking to get rich; those that were, usually left town. There was an unconscious shared understanding that wealth, position, and power can be taken from you, but not relationships with people who really know you. In the end, our greatest security is each other.
Politics was personal in several senses. First, politics was about whether my street gets repaired or my kid gets a summer job. Second, extensive and dense relationship networks ensured that candidates were personally known by voters. Third, politicians maintained influence by developing personal loyalties.
Shared values and assumptions ensured relatively little conflict regarding public policy. Politics resembled competition between sports teams and their followers rather than conflict over policy choices.
Newcomers tend to equate patronage with corrupt and inefficient government because they have experienced society, but not community. In community, patronage is, indeed, about loyalty and rewarding supporters. But it is not about giving people responsibilities for which they are unqualified.
In community, hiring officers have extensive knowledge of applicants, either directly or through relationship networks. This includes knowledge of qualities that will affect the applicant’s job performance but are outside of the job description and interview process. They also know whether the applicant’s friends, family, and associates will act to ensure that he or she performs and does not become an embarrassment.
Newcomers suggest that this is inherently unfair to people who come from other cultures and backgrounds. In the Somerville that I am describing, such people were few and well known.
All of these cultural elements fit Somerville’s governmental structure, which gives enormous authority to the mayor. Aldermen were judged more on their effectiveness in delivering constituent services than on political positions. The mayor could withhold constituent services from aldermen who wouldn’t join the “team.” When one “team” won the mayor’s office, they could reward loyalty with jobs.
In the context of a relatively homogenous electorate, limited policy conflicts, a thriving industrial economy, and vibrant nongovernmental organizations that met many community needs, this was an efficient form of government. What needed doing got done, with minimal cost to taxpayers.
In the decades to come, the electorate would diversify; the rich fabric of relationships, unravel; and the demands on government would skyrocket, along with taxes. But the structure of Somerville’s government would remain unchanged, and the culture that went with it would persist beyond its ability to cope effectively with those changes
An earlier version of this commentary appeared in the Somerville News.
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I’m looking forward to part 2! How much will Somerville lose in the anticipated unraveling? What might we be heading toward and what is a preferable outcome of our evolution from the homogeneous community?
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[...] Shelton’s post made me wonder… is an ecological politics possible in [...]
In a nutshell, Bill seems to be saying that population upheaval brought by shifts in the economy have led to a weakening of community relationships that used to help the city run smoothly, but are now out of sync with our structure of government.
A number of questions come to mind:
In the old days, were community relationships generally confined to specific cultural and religious groups or did they extend across such boundaries?
To what degree has the increase in the number of renters relative to the number of owners in the city impacted the community fabric?
How does the proportion of families with a child in the schools affect community ties?
What does Somerville’s history of gangs say about the integration or lack thereof between different cultural groups?
When did all these changes start happening?
Is our community on the path to full disintegration or will it just find new ways to connect? And what will those new ways be?
How well did the old city government serve all residents? Were there groups who were either intentionally or unintentionally left out because they didn’t have the right connections to city hall?
Patronage and tight control over constituent services might have helped the mayor maintain influence over the Board of Aldermen, but I’d doubt if that system was in the best interests of the city.
Has our structure of city government really remained unchanged? What about internal changes including shifts of policy and new programs?
What would be a better structure of government?
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I’ll try to answer Barry’s questions first, because I think that their answers inform Linda’s questions.
First, although the “weakening of community relationships that used to help the city run smoothly” was, indeed, brought on by “shifts in the economy,” those shifts’ effects were both direct and indirect, and consisted in more than population upheaval. When World War II ended, the U.S. was the only major industrial power in the world with an intact industrial base. With the entire world as its market, the U.S. economy exploded, growing consistently right up to 1973.
To support such dynamic growth, the economy needed workers who were geographically, socially, and culturally mobile. The ideal family portrayed in popular culture was nuclear, suburban, middle class, and upwardly mobile. Free of the binds of extended family, community obligations, and the understanding that “getting ahead” necessarily, meant leaving others behind, workers and their immediate families disproportionately went to wherever the material wards were the greatest.
This, in turn, spurred economic growth by creating greater demand for construction, consumer durables, automobile production, and infrastructure to support the atomization of families and their suburbanization. But, as I will say in the next episode, “those who left in search of privacy often found isolation. Those fleeing congestion came to hemorrhage time and wellbeing in highway traffic. Those wanting to shed their working-class identity lived to experience an America where popular culture denies the existence of class.”
Meanwhile, after 1973, that reality of class became increasingly more brutal. Just to maintain the level of consumption that the U.S. economy’s golden age had afforded middle class families, both adults in a nuclear family increasingly entered the work force. In the absence of the rich social relationships that had nurtured a sense of security, folks sought security in how much money they could make and how much they owned.
So, economic shifts had many more influences in the withering of community than just the closure of the factories, and these influences occurred throughout the U.S. What was exceptional about Somerville was how strong and rich a community it enjoyed before these changes.
To Barry’s questions:
In the old days, were community relationships generally confined to specific cultural and religious groups or did they extend across such boundaries?
Italian, Irish, and eventually, Portuguese immigrants were often initially skeptical of each other as a group. And among kids, the newer groups were often the target of the incumbents.
But these ethnicities shared a religious background and came together in neighborhood churches. In addition, there were so many other intervening relationships that people had a variety of ways to know each other, despite their culture/ethnic differences. These included unions, fraternal organizations, youth sports, political clubs, civic organizations, public schools, and just sitting on the stoop getting to know the neighbors.
Among the second generation, opposite-sexed members of different ethnicities were often exotically attractive. So they often produce kids with names like Carmine O’Toole, or Patrick Spinelli.
To what degree has the increase in the number of renters relative to the number of owners in the city impacted the community fabric?
There has actually been a decrease in the proportion of renters in recent years. For over a century, Somerville was the way station for new immigrants, Throughout this period, a majority of its domiciles were rental units. Just looking around your neighborhood, you will see that three quarters of Somerville’s housing units are in multi-family structures, most of which were two- and three-family buildings. The condoization wave over the past decade has been the first significant trend in the other direction.
How does the proportion of families with a child in the schools affect community ties?
While there aren’t hard measurements of this, it has to have the following affects: (1) kids not in public schools don’t get as much of an opportunity to interact with kids from all cultures, backgrounds, classes and neighborhoods; (2) parents don’t interact as much as a result of their participation in the PTA and other school-related activities.
What does Somerville’s history of gangs say about the integration or lack thereof between different cultural groups?
I’m assuming that, with this question, you are not referring to the Winter Hill Gang, but to youth gangs. Most dense urban communities with Somerville’s demographics and rapidity of change experienced far more serious gang problems than has Somerville. Although gang activity in Somerville remains significantly less than other communities sharing these characteristics, the widespread alarm here over gang activity is a measure of how exceptional Somerville’s strength of community was and therefore, how disconcerting the rise in gang activity is.
The link between lack of integration among cultural groups and gang activity is the subject of an old and venerable sociological theory called “differential association,” which I will leave you to explore via Google or other means.
When did all these changes start happening?
The suburbs maintained a powerful lure throughout the 1950s and 1960s. I would calculate that at least 35,000 people move to far away places with odd names like “Billerica.” Closure of the factories began in earnest at the end of the 1950s. I use the closure of the Ford factory and elimination of its 1,100 jobs in 1958 as a kind of turning point.
Is our community on the path to full disintegration or will it just find new ways to connect? And what will those new ways be?
The answer to both questions is up to us.
How well did the old city government serve all residents?
The government did a pretty good job, because it had less to do. Families, neighbors, churches, and other organizations just going about their normal activities conducted many of the education, welfare, peacekeeping, and other functions that government now performs. With the disintegration of these organizations, and with most adults having to work for a living, government gradually assumed these costly functions, many of which it is not particularly good at.
Were there groups who were either intentionally or unintentionally left out because they didn’t have the right connections to city hall?
It depends on what “left out” means. If your team didn’t win the elections, you would have scant chance to get a city job. But to keep winning elections, your team had to make sure that city services were well delivered.
Patronage and tight control over constituent services might have helped the mayor maintain influence over the Board of Aldermen, but I’d doubt if that system was in the best interests of the city.
It seems to me that critical standards should be based on what the potential of the situation allows. Kind of like Jesus going to the temple and saying that the impoverished widow who had given a “mite” to the church and prayed in the dark corner had given more than the wealthy who prayed loudly and visibly. I doubt that during the era that I describe here, a completely universalistic government could be achieved without sacrificing the community which, I believe, delivered more for the people. Today, that community is largely disintegrated, and the only explanation for the ongoing patronage and cronyism that we see is the effort to maintain political dominance.
Has our structure of city government really remained unchanged? What about internal changes including shifts of policy and new programs?
I’m really not sure what you are referring to here. What, in my mind, has absolutely remained is the political culture, which is out of time and out of tune with the needs of the people.
What would be a better structure of government?
The best way that I can think of to change the political culture is to change the structure. “Strong mayor” forms of government such as ours invite abuse of public trust. Although only tiny minority of Massachusetts’ cities and towns still have this form of government, they are the only municipalities in which there have been major corruption scandals. We should go to a Council/Manager form of government, not because it is necessarily inherently better, but because it will shake up the political culture.
Linda asks, “How much will Somerville lose in the anticipated unraveling?”
Although Somerville still enjoys a stronger sense of community than most cities, in comparison to it’s past, the unraveling has largely taken place already. This will not be apparent to newcomers, since the changes are only making Somerville like everywhere else. To old timers, there is a sense of loss, which is articulated in different ways, and focused on different causes. Those with vested interests in this political culture have focused discontent on “progressives” and equated progressives with newcomers. While the progressives haven’t done much to fix the problems that I am describing, they are in no way responsible for them.
What might we be heading toward and what is a preferable outcome of our evolution from the homogeneous community?
American society is on the brink of changes that are more dramatic than those seen by anyone now alive, including those who lived through World War II and the 1960s. Describing these changes and their causes, magnitude, and impacts will take a whole other series of articles. But the more that people feel that they must confront them as individuals or nuclear families, the harsher and more devastating these changes will be. The more we can figure out how to take care of each other and deal with them as a community, the better we will be able to manage them.
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There are many alternatives between a strong mayor and a strong city manager, and the corruption of politics is not particularly reduced with a manager form. It just changes. With a strong mayor there are patterns of cronyism, family relations, and kickback, no-show, and mistresses on the payroll; with a strong city manager, there are patterns of favored contractors, historic deal making, indirect but very powerful influentials, and a kind of corporate manipulation. Cambridge seems less corrupt than Somerville because we don’t know who sleeps with whom, but that is mostly because Somervillians don’t know the players. Meanwhile it takes a few years for most newcomers to realize the byplay between cousins and bedmates that makes a city this size move along.
The real problem with Somerville politics is that newcomers are so eager to express opinions and so loath to run in ward races that there is no serious change in Aldermen and no contest for Mayor. Quibbles about the form of government mask the demands that any form makes on the time and interest of an engaged public.
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The grass is always greener, I suppose. As a working-class resident of Cambridge, from the days when we were actually a factory town, hearing this sort of talk in Somerville worries me. A few years ago I wrote a paper concerning why, whence and wherefore of the City Manager system in Cambridge. Today this paper lurks in the “documents” section of The Bridge website—
http://www.bridgenews.org/background/WhichPeople.pdf/view
There was also a short article in our March issue about City Hall’s redevelopment plans for Somerville:
http://www.bridgenews.org/bridge_news/032008/are-blue-collar-jobs-passe-in-the-new-somerville/
I won’t say Somerville’s strong mayors have always been the truest “friends of the people” they have sworn to protect and defend. Given the lures and temptations of political power, no political arrangement can be taken for granted.
But the ability to democratically elect your chief executive is no trifle. Cambridge city councillors are well-paid blowers of liberal hot air who seldom if ever take any real initiative. They just take the credit and cast the blame for what the city manager does; it is he who controls all the departments and ultimately all the jobs.
Our current City Manager, who came to power before Saddam Hussein, lives in Lowell but grew up in North Cambridge—he is a consummate local pol, just as they all have been. But he is an unelected pol. Think about that.
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