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I'll Tell you Why . . . and then some . . .
Alan, there was no vitriol intended nor nothing personal towards you. Instead of vitriol I would characterize it as cynical, ironic, and tongue-in-cheek, with a pinch of dry humour on the side. Remember, we’re in the blogesphere here, I did not submit the piece for publication in the ESM or ProJo.
What struck me and spurred me to write about the Summit’s response was the way you responded to Mr. Methot’s letter while leaving out his name. Mr. Methot had no problem signing his name to his letter criticizing the Summit methods, and I doubt if he would have been offended if you had addressed your rebuttal directly to him.
Your claim to not wanting to flame a neighbor seems incongruous. Flaming takes place in cyberspace, and offering a letter of rebuttal to a published letter hardly qualifies as flaming. I would call it discourse, not flaming. Flaming suggests rude insults and mockery. You could have proffered a point by point rebuttal without insulting or mocking Mr. Methot.
Your responses to my piece and Mr. Methot’s lack detail in addressing the points we raised. It is one thing to state a disagreement, another to specifically address the why and wherefore of the disagreement.
Thus, your response, which sounded like a community effort (in which you drew short straw), seemed weak and ineffectual.
But thank you for asking the question and opening the door for discussion with your comment about my post We Were Dismayed!
I was wrong about at least one thing; someone in the Summit has the cojones to enter into discourse. I hope it's not just a hit and run.
I'm grateful that you opened with a question as that gives me the opportunity to also ask questions.
Don't forget, we're in the Blogesphere! NOT for the faint of heart.
Why the vitriol? The easy answer is, to quote the poet Stephan Crane, "Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart." The quoted poem can be found on the Poem of the Week Entry of August 22, 2005.
If a hint of vitriol is detected it is because I am bitter and disillusioned. Even listening to Willie Neslon and Sinead O’Conner’s duet of Don’t Give Up, by Peter Gabriel fails to inspire me. And it is politics on the local level that most makes my eyes jaundiced and glassy. Especially the politics of neighborhood associations.
You said,
I don't know you, you don't know me. If I recall correctly, you weren't at any of the discussions about the library sign
and you are right, but I was commenting on the published letters in the ESM by you and Methot. That is all I have to go on. And as you said, I have that right.
You said,
I didn't flame Mr. Methot in the ESM because he is a neighbor. I might not agree with his point of view, but he's welcome to it.
Well, I wasn't suggesting that you should have "Flamed" Methot. That would not be appropriate at all. What I was implying is that it was insulting to Mr. Methot to not mention him by name when you responded to his letter, as if it were written by "anonymous". Mr. Methot signed his name to his letter, and I interpreted the Summit’s response as insulting and demeaning to not refer to him by name in the Summit's response.
In your defense, I also believe that "the letter" was written by Summit committee and not solely by yourself: it was parsed and agonized over ad infinitum. Tell me if I'm wrong on this.
But I would think that most readers would agree that your letter came off as weak and ineffectual compared to Mr. Methot's.
You said,
. . . his retelling and recollection of the events, causalities, and outcomes were inaccurate. It wouldn't have served any purpose to pick his presentation of the issue apart, point-by-point, except to make me feel better.
I find this sentence disingenuous. If Methot's letter contained inaccuracies, it would be your duty to point them out. The purpose being to set the record straight, as you see it, and if that makes you you feel better . . .
You said,
Calling the letter "hyperbole" and "self-deception" sounds a little, well, hyperbolic.
But what I said referred to your statement when you said:
“. . . SNA’s goal is to sustain the residential fabric of the neighborhood that gives Summit its unique and vibrant character.”
And I said,
Don't you just detest that type of hyperbole, or is it self-deception?
There, I was referring to your characterization of Summit as a "unique and vibrant community". Summit is a very. very nice neighborhood, a bedroom community, but unique and vibrant? That characterization of Summit is in my opinion hyperbole. Unique & vibrant could well be applied to Mt. Hope, College Hill, Fox Point, and to the million dollar properties in Blackstone. To Summit. I believe that is hyperbole.
You want unique & vibrant: drive down Camp Street and witness the debris outside the Ministries, the small coteries of drug dealers on various corners, the people walking down the street shedding a soft drink cup from McDonalds here, a BigMac wrapper there, a crack pipe on the next corner. A Councilman who insists there is no drug dealing in Mt. Hope. That is unique. And vibrant. And no end in sight. Priceless!
But to get back to neighborhood associations, I do sympathize with you. It is only a few volunteers who make anything happen.
But how much money does the West Broadway Neighborhood Association get from the City Council each year? Many thousands in grants, something exceeding $35,000 if I remember even semi-accurately, because they are well represented by their councilman. They hold great balls and auctions. $50 bucks just to get in the door. I don’t know about the grants given to other N.A’s.
But do you know the history of the Mt. Hope Neighborhood Association and how much money they have received year after year? Do you know what is going on in Mt. Hope? Do you know why, if over a million dollars has flowed into the coffers of the MHNA in the last ten years, and the same City Councilman has represented Mt. Hope for the same length of time, why we still have drug dealers operating with impunity on Camp Street corners, and why Mt. Hope still exports crime to other East Side neighborhoods?
Do you think we pay less property tax in Mt. Hope than in Summit?
Mt. Hope is considered a less desirable place to live than Summit. Why is that? Mt. Hope is in a better location than Summit. Mt. Hope is a few minutes to downtown, seconds to College Hill, seconds to Thayer Street, seconds to Rt. 95.
Yet our Ward Councilman gets a half million dollars plus for curb bump outs in Summit but for Mt. Hope he installs illegal grills in Billy Taylor Park. Open fires are illegal in public parks in Providence, by ordinance, but in Billy Taylor Park, locus of drug dealing on the East Side, our Councilman overrides the ordinance and installs grills that drug dealers use as a cover. I guess votes are cheaper in Mt. Hope. Everything is. Except the property tax. He signs off and obtains permits in BTPark for every disruptive rap music event, drawing drug dealers and buyers from every part of Providence and from as far away as Massachusetts, leaving the neighborhood in shambles.
Does the Ward Councilman discourage the police from enforcing the law in Summit? Because he sure does in Mt. Hope. He accuses the police of harassing drug dealing Mt. Hope residents, one of the reasons the police are lax in enforcing the law in Mt. Hope. What future does a policeman have who goes against City Hall? For years good cops did not want a post in Mt. Hope because they knew they would be hamstrung by politicians. The police make arrests, and the drug dealers and their families run to the Councilman and claim racial harassment. The drug culture is deeply embedded in a small demographic in Mt. Hope, yet that small demographic of embedded drug culture wields inordinate power due to the Councilman as enabler and dominates the neighborhood.
How would the Summit like to live with this situation? Well, you do!
There are no reasons why drug dealing and its associated crime can not be eliminated from Mt. Hope. It would never be tolerated in any other East Side neighborhood.
Bump-out your curbs all you want, fight library signage, push for an aesthetically pleasing North Main Street, but please, please don’t pretend that you have the general good at heart, or especially the interests of Mt. Hope, as long as you turn a blind eye to the political corruption that allows Mt. Hope to run an open air drug market and export crime to all other East Side neighborhoods.
And be aware that it is your Councilman who enables the drug dealing in Mt. Hope.
Yes, it’s deep, and it predates you and me.
Posted at May 12, 2007 06:30 PM
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I am a Camp Street resident and I happen to be a big fan of the bumpouts in Summit. I run through there all the time and the bumpouts slow speeding traffic down and put pedestrians at more visible locations when waiting to cross. I see this as a great asset to the neighborhood.
Sure I too am frustrated with the drug dealing and all of its ramifications on Camp Street that I have come to see on a daily basis. Why let that ruin a good thing in Summit though?
There will always be crime issues that are more important than things that seem silly like bumpouts, but that doesn't mean we should discourage them. In an urban neighborhood, even the smallest things have a trickle effect. How many people have been injured in the drug trade over the past few years versus how many pedestrians have been nailed by cars in that same period? I don't know the answer but I could bet that in most urban areas it would even out.
Posted by: Adam at May 14, 2007 03:36 PM