[Part of a series on the devolution of power, an essential but widely
ignored aspect of democracy]
BRINGING DEVOLUTION TO THE 'HOOD
Sam Smith
[Remarks at a conference on neighborhood commissions in 2006]
WASHINGTON'S advisory neighborhood commissions came out of a time that
seems distant today, a time before 9/11, George Bush, the closing of
DC's public hospital and the socio-ethnic cleansing of DC.
Sure, we were still recovering from the riots, but the very word
'recover' - one you don't hear much today - implied that there was a
least a chance you would. The writer Dorothy Allison described the
spirit of the times: "I had the idea that if you took America and shook
it really hard it would do the right thing."
And so you proposed all sorts of new ideas and just talking about them
made you feel hopeful. Central to a lot the talk was devolution - the
idea that people could control things better if they were brought down
to the local level. We tend to forget this now, but back then,
decentralization and community power were important progressive ideas.
I wrote about them a lot the 1960s and suggested that Washington needed
neighborhood councils with members representing small districts that
would get to approve the local police commander, help direct the
schools, set up a neighborhood development corporation and so forth.
In the early 1970s, those of us in the new DC Statehood Party added the
idea to our platform. We wanted:
- Neighborhood authorities and neighborhood housing banks
- Elected neighborhood legislative councils and neighborhood executives
with power over selection of neighborhood police officials, selection of
neighborhood school superintendent, school site selection and proposed
roads.
- Community control of the schools
We even suggested that liquor stors be turned into neighborhood
cooperatives.
Then, as sometimes happens with ideas, something happened. Don Frasier,
a progressive member of Congress from Minneapolis - where they already
had advisory neighborhood commissions - added the plan to the DC home
rule bill then under consideration.
It wasn't well received by the local powers that wannatobe, the ones who
were in line to personally benefit from the pending congressional
approval of an elected mayor and council for the District colony. For
all their talk of democracy, they weren't happy to see some of their
pending power being distributed to others. . .
The home rule bill passed and the ANC referendum was easily approved but
the legislation had not fully defined the nature and power of the
commissions. That was to be left to the new city government.
A group of us formed a citizens lobby to proposed rules under which the
ANCs would function. At one meeting, someone suggested that the
commissions' views be given "great weight" by the city government.
"What does that term mean," asked a lawyer.
"Damned if I know," I replied, "but let's put it in and find out."
As luck would have it, the court case deciding what it meant would come
out of my neighborhood commission district and I, as the commissioner,
would be one of the plaintiffs. It was a tough one for me for not only
did it force me to betray my roots - it involved an Irish bar - but one
of the owners, the bar's lawyer and all of the complaining petitioners
lived in my district. I had tried to get them all together but it didn't
work. In the end, the court handed down a decision on "great weight"
that favored the commissions.
Our new commission worked remarkably well considering that all of us
were playing it by ear. We made some simple rules that helped. For
example, we would only deal with local issues. That way our national and
citywide conflicts wouldn't ruin our meetings.
And we also developed some good habits, such as retiring to the Zebra
Room to debrief over drinks after each meeting. We accepted our
differences and played by the rules, remained friends, and it all worked
pretty well.
I was named chair of the education, recreation, and agriculture
committee. I added that last term because we had the largest community
garden in DC. Soon I wished I hadn't because a big dispute developed
over how long people should retain their garden rights on public land. I
proposed what I thought was a modest compromise - seven years - but the
gardeners saw that proposal as the moral equivalent of eminent domain.
I had more luck with the Great Hearst Playground Dispute. A hundred and
fifty tennis players came to me with a petition to have a backboard
constructed at Hearst playground. Knee jerk politician that I was, I
successfully pressed for the backboard. The Recreation Department,
however, constructed the backboard without consulting anyone and made a
huge cinderblock wall that blocked some of the neighbors' view of the
playground. Next thing I knew, there was a petition from 150 neighbors
wanting the backboard removed.
The matter was ultimately resolved during a five hour meeting with the
Rec Department and disputing parties. I proposed that a new backboard be
placed at a 90 degree angle so it didn't block anyone's view. Geometry
worked where politics had failed.
I was overwhelmed with problems, some solvable, many not. I had far less
clout that many residents thought but I worked overtime to conceal the
fact. This didn't help. Their expectations just seemed to mount.
As I looked around the city, things weren't going as well as I had
hoped. For one thing, the rules the city council had passed deliberately
restricted the councils' power: no incorporation, no spending of public
funds in joint projects with other commissions and so forth.
From the beginning, and to this day, the city government considered the
ANCs to be an annoyance to be controlled more than to be included. I had
argued from the start that our prime goal should be to take the "A" out
of ANC. . . to make these bodies functioning units of government rather
than merely advisory. Instead they were dismissed by the media and
co-opted by politicians and bureaucrats until only the bravest and most
self-reliant commissions dared act as the law had envisioned.
From the start in 1974, city officials began to set up bureaucratic and
fiscal hurdles for the fledgling commissions to jump over and they
adopted the view that the ANCs were just another part of the city
bureacracy. At workshops and in regulations, they treated the ANCs as
subservient and ancillary. Many commissioners, unschooled in either ANC
history, law, or politics accepted this more menial role without
question. They also accepted the gross and widespread falsehood that
ANCs were banned from meeting with one another. In fact, the law only
prohibited them from spending city money to do so.
Instead of seeing themselves as a sleeping giant -- a grassroots
political system that could actually be run from the grassroots -- the
ANCs tolerated a lesser role.
This subservience continues to today.
The situation has not been helped by gentrification. There are unhappy
reports of ethnic and cultural conflicts being played out in commissions
just as elsewhere.
We seem to have forgotten how to share space with others. For example in
one part of town we have churchgoers mad at a gay bar and gentrifiers
mad at churchgoers' double-parked cars. As a heterosexual agnostic I
have no money on this race, but I know the answer is most likely to come
when both sides accept the notion of reciprocal liberty - that we can't
be free to do what we want unless we grant others a similar right. Out
of such an attitude can come, for example, valet parking on Sundays and
a hefty contribution to a local rec center by the gay bar.
ANCs can be important mediators at such times or they can add to the
conflict. It's one of the many choices their members have to make.
ANCs are still a sleeping giant. Don't believe what city hall tells you
about what they can and can't do. They can do almost anything if they do
it the right way.
For example, the chairs in a ward could get together each month at
someone's house and share what their commissions agree about. If they
have differences, forget them for the time being. Look for the unity and
then let your councilmember, school board member, mayor, and media know
about it.
Practice this awhile and then try it citywide. Three dozen commission
chairs working together could become a de facto lower house of the city
government. . .
And it's not just a local matter. In increasingly corrupt and
anti-democratic America, local solidarity and action are oases of
freedom and decency from which a new future can grow. As we find
ourselves in a post-constitutional society where our leaders in politics
and business consider themselves immune from either morality or
legislation, we must constantly tend these community gardens of hope.
Just as during Washington's century of segregation with no home rule,
neighborhood organizations in DC were the voice and organizing strength
of this city, so today our communities are where we must begin to make
things work again with decency, democracy and fairness.
Our neighborhood commissions can be central to this if they remember the
words of Jane Jacobs: "Cities have the capability of providing something
for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by
everybody."
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ignored aspect of democracy]
BRINGING DEVOLUTION TO THE 'HOOD
Sam Smith
[Remarks at a conference on neighborhood commissions in 2006]
WASHINGTON'S advisory neighborhood commissions came out of a time that
seems distant today, a time before 9/11, George Bush, the closing of
DC's public hospital and the socio-ethnic cleansing of DC.
Sure, we were still recovering from the riots, but the very word
'recover' - one you don't hear much today - implied that there was a
least a chance you would. The writer Dorothy Allison described the
spirit of the times: "I had the idea that if you took America and shook
it really hard it would do the right thing."
And so you proposed all sorts of new ideas and just talking about them
made you feel hopeful. Central to a lot the talk was devolution - the
idea that people could control things better if they were brought down
to the local level. We tend to forget this now, but back then,
decentralization and community power were important progressive ideas.
I wrote about them a lot the 1960s and suggested that Washington needed
neighborhood councils with members representing small districts that
would get to approve the local police commander, help direct the
schools, set up a neighborhood development corporation and so forth.
In the early 1970s, those of us in the new DC Statehood Party added the
idea to our platform. We wanted:
- Neighborhood authorities and neighborhood housing banks
- Elected neighborhood legislative councils and neighborhood executives
with power over selection of neighborhood police officials, selection of
neighborhood school superintendent, school site selection and proposed
roads.
- Community control of the schools
We even suggested that liquor stors be turned into neighborhood
cooperatives.
Then, as sometimes happens with ideas, something happened. Don Frasier,
a progressive member of Congress from Minneapolis - where they already
had advisory neighborhood commissions - added the plan to the DC home
rule bill then under consideration.
It wasn't well received by the local powers that wannatobe, the ones who
were in line to personally benefit from the pending congressional
approval of an elected mayor and council for the District colony. For
all their talk of democracy, they weren't happy to see some of their
pending power being distributed to others. . .
The home rule bill passed and the ANC referendum was easily approved but
the legislation had not fully defined the nature and power of the
commissions. That was to be left to the new city government.
A group of us formed a citizens lobby to proposed rules under which the
ANCs would function. At one meeting, someone suggested that the
commissions' views be given "great weight" by the city government.
"What does that term mean," asked a lawyer.
"Damned if I know," I replied, "but let's put it in and find out."
As luck would have it, the court case deciding what it meant would come
out of my neighborhood commission district and I, as the commissioner,
would be one of the plaintiffs. It was a tough one for me for not only
did it force me to betray my roots - it involved an Irish bar - but one
of the owners, the bar's lawyer and all of the complaining petitioners
lived in my district. I had tried to get them all together but it didn't
work. In the end, the court handed down a decision on "great weight"
that favored the commissions.
Our new commission worked remarkably well considering that all of us
were playing it by ear. We made some simple rules that helped. For
example, we would only deal with local issues. That way our national and
citywide conflicts wouldn't ruin our meetings.
And we also developed some good habits, such as retiring to the Zebra
Room to debrief over drinks after each meeting. We accepted our
differences and played by the rules, remained friends, and it all worked
pretty well.
I was named chair of the education, recreation, and agriculture
committee. I added that last term because we had the largest community
garden in DC. Soon I wished I hadn't because a big dispute developed
over how long people should retain their garden rights on public land. I
proposed what I thought was a modest compromise - seven years - but the
gardeners saw that proposal as the moral equivalent of eminent domain.
I had more luck with the Great Hearst Playground Dispute. A hundred and
fifty tennis players came to me with a petition to have a backboard
constructed at Hearst playground. Knee jerk politician that I was, I
successfully pressed for the backboard. The Recreation Department,
however, constructed the backboard without consulting anyone and made a
huge cinderblock wall that blocked some of the neighbors' view of the
playground. Next thing I knew, there was a petition from 150 neighbors
wanting the backboard removed.
The matter was ultimately resolved during a five hour meeting with the
Rec Department and disputing parties. I proposed that a new backboard be
placed at a 90 degree angle so it didn't block anyone's view. Geometry
worked where politics had failed.
I was overwhelmed with problems, some solvable, many not. I had far less
clout that many residents thought but I worked overtime to conceal the
fact. This didn't help. Their expectations just seemed to mount.
As I looked around the city, things weren't going as well as I had
hoped. For one thing, the rules the city council had passed deliberately
restricted the councils' power: no incorporation, no spending of public
funds in joint projects with other commissions and so forth.
From the beginning, and to this day, the city government considered the
ANCs to be an annoyance to be controlled more than to be included. I had
argued from the start that our prime goal should be to take the "A" out
of ANC. . . to make these bodies functioning units of government rather
than merely advisory. Instead they were dismissed by the media and
co-opted by politicians and bureaucrats until only the bravest and most
self-reliant commissions dared act as the law had envisioned.
From the start in 1974, city officials began to set up bureaucratic and
fiscal hurdles for the fledgling commissions to jump over and they
adopted the view that the ANCs were just another part of the city
bureacracy. At workshops and in regulations, they treated the ANCs as
subservient and ancillary. Many commissioners, unschooled in either ANC
history, law, or politics accepted this more menial role without
question. They also accepted the gross and widespread falsehood that
ANCs were banned from meeting with one another. In fact, the law only
prohibited them from spending city money to do so.
Instead of seeing themselves as a sleeping giant -- a grassroots
political system that could actually be run from the grassroots -- the
ANCs tolerated a lesser role.
This subservience continues to today.
The situation has not been helped by gentrification. There are unhappy
reports of ethnic and cultural conflicts being played out in commissions
just as elsewhere.
We seem to have forgotten how to share space with others. For example in
one part of town we have churchgoers mad at a gay bar and gentrifiers
mad at churchgoers' double-parked cars. As a heterosexual agnostic I
have no money on this race, but I know the answer is most likely to come
when both sides accept the notion of reciprocal liberty - that we can't
be free to do what we want unless we grant others a similar right. Out
of such an attitude can come, for example, valet parking on Sundays and
a hefty contribution to a local rec center by the gay bar.
ANCs can be important mediators at such times or they can add to the
conflict. It's one of the many choices their members have to make.
ANCs are still a sleeping giant. Don't believe what city hall tells you
about what they can and can't do. They can do almost anything if they do
it the right way.
For example, the chairs in a ward could get together each month at
someone's house and share what their commissions agree about. If they
have differences, forget them for the time being. Look for the unity and
then let your councilmember, school board member, mayor, and media know
about it.
Practice this awhile and then try it citywide. Three dozen commission
chairs working together could become a de facto lower house of the city
government. . .
And it's not just a local matter. In increasingly corrupt and
anti-democratic America, local solidarity and action are oases of
freedom and decency from which a new future can grow. As we find
ourselves in a post-constitutional society where our leaders in politics
and business consider themselves immune from either morality or
legislation, we must constantly tend these community gardens of hope.
Just as during Washington's century of segregation with no home rule,
neighborhood organizations in DC were the voice and organizing strength
of this city, so today our communities are where we must begin to make
things work again with decency, democracy and fairness.
Our neighborhood commissions can be central to this if they remember the
words of Jane Jacobs: "Cities have the capability of providing something
for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by
everybody."
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