Moving Past a Culture of Fear

We are the most safe, secure people in the history of the planet. Yet, as our safety and security continues to increase, rising almost in direct contradictory proportion is our level of fear. I attribute much of this to our comfort: the level to which we take our quality of life for granted. I attribute more to our hubris: despite the giving nature that resides somewhere in all of us, we default to a place where we believe that our own person and our own family are entitled to something to which the rest of the world is not. However, if I look back over the last five years, I attribute most of this to our reaction to 9/11. Instead of using this opportunity to bring people together, our leaders have taken advantage of this tragedy and turned it into something that not only divides us, but plays upon our comforts and our hubris, forcing us to sink deeper into those realities.

I hoped Madison would be different, that we would build on our progressive tradition of openness and compassion and somehow sidestep this reality. I hoped that we’d show the world how people could react and watch in sadness as the rest of the world tried to catch up. But here we are, in one of the safest places in the world, in one of the most secure times in history, pushing crime, fear, punishment, and public safety to the top of our local agenda. As if this weren’t bad enough, we have taken it a step further by focusing only on reactive solutions, including additional police resources, additional tools for law enforcement, and strategies focused on further dividing an already fractured community.

Madison has held three neighborhood meetings on public safety in the past month, and over 2,000 residents have shown up to decry increasing crime in their neighborhoods. They demanded more police and more support, asking elected officials to focus their sole attention to protecting their neighborhoods. Few, if any, talked about preventive strategies, about poverty or the root causes of crime, about homelessness, about AODA, about childhood abuse or neglect, or about any of the other realities that could cause a person to lose hope and stop caring about the impact his behavior has on others.

Meanwhile, neighborhoods that have faced serious crime for years, perhaps decades, continue to pull together and try to figure out ways to address the root causes of this issue. They fight for affordable housing, they plan mobile food pantries and community dinners to feed their hungry, they beg for additional resources to help their children, and they try to reach through their muddled streets and find hope.

Somewhere in this great city, there resides a solution. A solution that recognizes that society only makes one rock solid commitment to the poor: all one has to do is commit a crime and we will provide him or her with guaranteed food and housing. But where is our commitment to those who don't commit crimes? What of our commitment to one of my constituents, a single mother of four, finally getting her life together, who broke her arm, lost her job, and is now about to be evicted? Think about this, put yourself in these shoes. We are not talking about a hardened criminal, a violent scourge on our society, or a resident of Chicago. We are talking about one of us, one of ours, a Madisonian, living right here in one of the most progressive, wealthy communities on earth. What do we want to do for her?

What of the man who was recently shot in Allied? A horrible, violent act that left him hospitalized and seriously injured. What have we done, in our culture of fear and violence, which has led him to remain unwilling to offer any information about the person who shot him? Is it distrust for our police? Is it the result of a community that has forced the dialogue into us versus them? Is it fear of retribution from his attacker? Or is it his residence in a world outside of that which we can imagine, yet one only a few miles away, where things like this just happen, where life goes on, where it could have just as easily turned out the other way? What do we want to do for him?

People must feel safe. There is an inherent instinct here that drives our behavior and leads us to make decisions we’d otherwise not make. It led millions of white, middle class people to flee to the suburbs for a generation, leaving behind nothing but huge pockets of poverty, scant resources, and decaying inner cities. We can’t allow that to happen in Madison. So we must respond to that which we are hearing. We must stem the very real fear that exists. But we also must work together to help our citizens get past this fear, to help us all understand that the fear itself almost certainly does more damage than the violent act that preceded it. And if we really care about saving our community, we need to move past law and order and find a way past all this violence. If we want peace in Madison, we must have justice. So let’s add police and resources and address this fear. But let’s also recognize that we must be in this together and focus on the root causes of poverty that often lead to crime in the first place.

There are so many solutions that we know work. Just around the corner from Allied Drive resides the Madison Apprenticeship Program (MAP), the brainchild of one woman whose drive for change makes more difference than a dozen new police. One graduate entered the class homeless and jobless. He secured housing and now manages an apartment complex and paints as an independent contractor. Another graduate spent the last dozen years dealing drugs. He now works at an area service station, signing up for every extra hour of overtime he can find. There is a second generation drug dealer who graduated and now works as a sales clerk and attends MATC, working to become a lab technician. Another graduate fought with others regularly, used drugs, and was always involved with police. Now she is employed as a technician with a communications company and is taking computer classes at MATC. She hopes to have her own computer business one day. Just four examples of how, for both the individuals and for our community, engaged participation can trump incarceration.

If we want to move forward as a community and solve this problem, we will have to work together. We may have to put aside our hubris and step, however briefly, outside of our comfort zone. It’s pretty simple: if we are divided and acting out of fear, we’ve already lost.

Impeachment: Why It Mattered

The Madison City Council voted, 8-3, at their September 4th, 2007 meeting to recommend that we initiate impeachment hearings against President Bush. Sadly, the resolution still failed because 11 votes are needed and impeachment only received 8. Eight alders abstained and one left early.

I have been called a communist, an idiot, and a Bush-hater. I have been told that this debate was needless, counter-productive, and a waste of time. I have been castigated for taking up an issue that is not appropriate for the City Council.

First, I do not hate President Bush. Second, it is never needless to advance a cause that matters to our country, our community, and our constituents. Thirdly, I can't fathom how this issue is inappropriate for the City Council. Another alder, on her own time, took the effort to prepare this resolution and bring it before us. It was wholly legal, ethical, and appropriate for her to do so. Once it was in front of us, it was our obligation to act on it just like we would any other resolution.

We didn't waste any time on this except our own. It was the last item on the agenda; we didn't get to it until 3:00 in the morning. If this hadn't been on the agenda, we would have gone home and gotten a (much needed) extra hour of sleep.

70 of our constituents showed up for a rally before our meeting. 60 of them came to testify. 15 of them stayed nine hours, until 4:00 in the morning, to participate in the debate. We received dozens of phone calls, hundreds of emails, and a petition signed by over 8,000 Madisonians. There is simply no way to deny it. It mattered.

Why I voted yes: I believe it's possible that President Bush didn't tell the truth about why we went into the war with Iraq. I also believe it's possible that executive privilege was misappropriated regarding how long we remained in the war, the use of our US DOJ, the Patriot Act, wiretapping, and other issues. Impeachment doesn't mean someone is guilty. It means there is evidence to suggest the possibility of guilt. I believe that possibility exists and am therefore supportive of an investigation to learn the truth. Some issues are important enough that we (as American citizens) need to know the truth. I am fully appreciative of the fact that the investigation may have turned up nothing. I would be thrilled if that were the case and would feel somewhat better about the course that this administration has taken.

Either way, for me, this is not about Bush hating or wasting time. It's about us, as elected officials who are closer to our constituents than any other level of government, responding to what we are hearing. And thousands of our constituents said this mattered.

A 9.11 Tribute: Six Years Later

As an alder, a member of the city’s Transit and Parking Commission, and a dedicated supporter (and user) of Madison Metro, I was honored to attend a press conference today at the UW Arboretum, announcing the addition of five hybrid buses to the Metro fleet. There were a lot of speeches and praise offered by numerous dignitaries and partners, but sadly the most important statement went unsaid.

The United States consumes 21 million barrels of oil. Daily. Only 5 million of these barrels are produced domestically; another 5 million are produced in and imported from the Middle East.

And while one can’t blame the entirety of forty years of failed mid-east policy on our insatiable appetite for mid-east oil, it is certainly the leading factor. And regardless of what one believes about September 11, 2001, I think we can all agree that were it not for four decades of intervention in the Middle East, September 11, 2001 may not have happened.

So while everyone was admiring our attractive new buses today, I was saddened by the fact that no one made the connection; that no one mentioned the horrific tragedy that we all experienced six years ago today nor the fact that today’s rollout of five hybrid buses does more than help the environment.

It honors the victims, the heroes, the still sick and forever wounded, of 9/11. It honors them because today, on the sixth anniversary of this horrific event, we took a bold step to reduce our dependence on mid-east oil. A small step that, if replicated a hundred times a day throughout this country, would demonstrate a far greater commitment to their sacrifice than our counterfeit and counterproductive war on terror. On this day, it was the most important thing we did and it was left unspoken.