Rochester seems to be at a strange point right now, as if we
were standing on a huge ball, trying to keep our balance, and the least little
thing could throw us off.
A lot of things are going right. There’s actual construction
downtown: new housing, new commercial buildings. Some established businesses
are expanding. And every few weeks, there’s news of another business moving
into the city – nothing huge, no major industry employing tens of thousands of
people, but still, every few hundred new jobs are worth celebrating. And the
photonics institute is headed our way.
In her recent State of the City address, Mayor Lovely Warren
noted developments like those and others – CityGate,
Rhinos stadium and Charlotte Harbor improvements, the successful conversion of
the Culver Road Armory. A higher credit rating. More children in kindergarten. More
funding for job training.
Those developments are real. And they’re getting attention
outside of Rochester. The Rose Center, which is operated by the National League
of Cities and the Urban Land Institute, chose Rochester as one of four cities
for a downtown revitalization study.
An organization called CityAge chose
us as the site of its 2016 summit on “The New American City,” where leaders of
cities and businesses from around the country will gather June 6 and 7 to
discuss such topics as job creation, infrastructure, and technology.
The governor is bragging about the Rochester-Monroe
Anti-Poverty Initiative, and the Buffalo News recently ran a story titled
“Buffalo Looks for Lessons from Rochester’s Fight Against
Poverty.”
But Warren was blunt in her State of the City address when
she talked about Rochester’s problems: our poverty – particularly our childhood
poverty – our children’s low academic achievement, the availability of guns, a
culture of violence. Whether we want to admit it or not, the low academic
achievement and the violence are directly due to the decades of concentrated
poverty we have let build up in inner-city neighborhoods.
And so far, we have made no headway whatsoever in that area.
The governor’s plaudits are a wee bit early: RMAPI, the Anti-Poverty
Initiative, is still in the planning stages. It has certainly gotten buy-in
from a lot of community leaders, and it has made sure that the voices of the
poor are included in its efforts. But the obstacles are simply massive.
Generations of unemployment and under-employment, low wages
for the working poor, individual and structural racism: how do we change all of
that? What can we do about schools? How many of Rochester’s unemployed poor
will be qualified for the photonics jobs?
How do we change the hearts and minds of business and
government officials who believe that poverty is the result of laziness and taxpayer-funded
benefits?
How do we change the hearts and minds of people – and this
publication hears from them every week – who believe that racism has no
relationship at all to our poverty rate?
Is it possible to reduce poverty without breaking up its
concentration? Without somehow integrating communities and
schools?
We do have things to celebrate. The new housing being
developed is real (though I’d breathe easier if it were due to surging regional
population growth rather than an influx of people from the suburbs). There are
reasons, as the mayor says, to believe that our future is bright.
But keeping my optimism reined in is the latest Community
Report Card from ACT Rochester. There, among news of important improvements,
are more troubling signs. Chief among them: the city’s poverty rate continues
to worsen, and African Americans and Latinos continue to be the most severely
affected.
This has to stop.
This community has known about poverty and its impact for
decades. And we have not lacked action or good intentions. My office shelves
are lined with reports from consultants and task forces and blue ribbon
committees. RMAPI is not our first attempt to deal with this persistent
problem. Sadly, I am very afraid it will not be our last.
This article appears in Apr 27 – May 3, 2016.
“Rochester seems to be at a strange point right now, as if we were standing on a huge ball, trying to keep our BALANCE, and the least little thing could throw us off.” I think the problem is that we are afraid of being thrown off! So, any criticism or new idea the City tends to reject.
For years and years, I have been suggesting simplistic ideas for our schools. My latest push is for easy ideas to motivate students. I push the use of the EASY button, from Staples to motivate students. But our schools cannot listen to outside ideas. It is too confusing for them. They might lose their BALANCE.
Perhaps, perhaps, when our leaders lose their fear of losing their BALANCE they will start to listen to outside ideas, in education, anti-poverty, etc, etc. And then, by trial and error, we will move forward, not backward…
http://www.SavingSchools.org
“This has to stop.
This community has known about poverty and its impact for decades. And we have not lacked action or good intentions. My office shelves are lined with reports from consultants and task forces and blue ribbon committees. RMAPI is not our first attempt to deal with this persistent problem. Sadly, I am very afraid it will not be our last.”
I agree. After 60 years of bad decision making , you would think that someone would try a new way of thinking.