We have already had a lot of extensive discussions processing the loss last Tuesday, not just of our candidate for Governor but for 3 our of 4 ballot questions our movement had hoped to pass. I think part of what was missing in the Coakley campaign and missing even in our discussions here-is the fact that our state with its abundance of resources, solid fiscal management, liberal levels of tolerance, and excellent health care and higher education systems-is still a fundamentally unequal place.
In reality we live in two different commonwealths. The dynamic information based economy of the immediate Boston area and the struggling Gateway cities on our periphery-particularly those in the Northwest, Western, and Southeast corners of our state.
Anthony Bourdain is a world renowned food journalist and snarky personality, but his CNN series Parts Unknown has been a far more serious journalistic undertaking. Just last week he did an hour long program on the people of Iran, a widely praised episode that may win him an Emmy. This week he visited the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and I was excited to see what he would have to show of my home state.
It wasn’t pretty. His segment on Provincetown dovetailed his own bohemian first year as a chef there, during the 70s. He discusses how open and gay friendly it was even then, but also how that subculture interacted with the dominant conservative Catholic fishermen who would have the blessing of the fleet and a unique traditional way of life. Most people got along with one another, and it was a real community. Now, he and another chef reminisce that most of their friends from that era are dead from drugs, the gay enclave of a fishing town is now a gay town with a fishing enclave, and most of their favorite spots have been gentrified away.
He interviews two fishermen-and their tale was particularly sad-and completely true. They are only six or seven boats that still go out, they get hit with almost $3,500 of fees to the agency they rent from, liscense fees and taxes they pay to the state, and are very conscientious that there is little left to catch. They down some pints and a shot with Bourdain and lament that their sons won’t follow in their footsteps. This segment was straight out of the Baker debate performance-which we all instinctively mocked-waving off this way of life as an environmental calamity or an antiquity not part of modern Massachusetts life. It’s not, it’s an important part of our heritage and the actual livelihood of hard working blue collar folks who used to be the backbone of our party. It hit me, and it hit me hard, that we are not doing enough to help not just those seven boats in P-Town, but the communities of Fall River, New Bedford, Gloucester, and those communities in Boston itself that depend on this resource for their livelihood.
He then dovetails to Western part of the state and he examines the heroin epidemic in Greenfield. The epidemic in Vermont made the front page of the NY Times, but I had no idea it was also a problem in Western MA. I bet many of you didn’t either. And this ignorance is part of our problem. I could easily locate Tanzania on a blank map of Africa, but couldn’t have told you what county Greenfield was in or how to get there until I watched that episode last night.
He candlepin bowls with some old timers who talk about how there is nothing to do for the young people there, one guy says he retired from his business and it wouldn’t work these days, so he’d be slinging dope too if he had to make a living. Another guy tours the old mills and factory towns, still abandoned, looking just as gritty as a Detroit landscape. He talks to a single mom who had her kids taken away due to her addiction, how she cleaned up, and talks to doctors, cops, the Sheriff, and others trying to stop the epidemic-these talks hit home since Bourdain himself recovered from heroin addiction himself. These are hard working folks who are waging a daily battle without any attention from this state, it’s current or future Governor, or any of us.
Watching it made me feel like I had failed my fellow Bay Staters. I went off to U Chicago to get my degree, applied to the Foreign Service and jobs in DC, trying to get away and find myself and my purpose serving big national or even international policy causes. Now I know, I gotta go back to help out the folks left behind not just in my hometown of Cambridge (and there are many), but in Greenfield, New Bedford, and the other places we have left behind.
Our party motto should be-leave no family behind. This should be the greatest state to raise a family, go to school, and earn a living. Ptown and Greenfield looked placid and ideal in this episode, the very kind of places Rockwell depicted (and often did), that are now under the gun of gentrification and rising costs, with it’s denizens seeking escape by the needle, and soon, by the slot machine. That is not how our state should be. We can and should do so much better.
Let’s be a single Commonwealth again, one focused on ensuring that we are all taken care of, one where the middle class can thrive instead of being squeezed, where poverty is solved instead of contained to the less than desirable zip codes, and where everyone has a fair shot to thrive. Let’s leave no family behind.
TuanAnh says
JConway, I just wanted to say that your posts in particular have prompted me to come out of hiding and post my thoughts!
This is so incredibly well-written and so very on point. Your point about going away for school and looking into policy areas in international development strikes a chord with me. I thought the same way for a very long time.
That is until I made the same realization you did. That as an Asian American and a relatively young individual trying to survive in the worst economy in well over two generations, my impact on policy would have a much greater impact right here at home. That’s not to say that economic inequality and social disparities don’t exist abroad or that they’r not important.
But as a measure of impact, we don’t have to look far to see them right in our own backyard. And as a person of color myself who gets lumped into the facetious Model Minority Myth of “success” and “meritocracy”, addressing those inequities right here at home has a particularly resonant meaning for me.
Thank you for such an excellent post!
jconway says
And keep posting!
TuanAnh says
And I certainly intend to!
johntmay says
All means All. Yeah, let’s push that again and again until it holds. I watched the Bourdain show as well and had the same reaction. I live in Franklin. We had a big drug bust of heroin dealers a few months ago, never made the papers much. I know of a local family in a high class neighborhood (houses go for $750K +) where one young member is dealing with heroin addition.
That’s the stuff of wealth inequality as illustrated in “The Spirit Level” (a book we all ought to read. When the disparities get this off balance, we all suffer.
I read where John Henry lives mansion with a “safe room”. Even he lives in fear and fear leads to stress which leads to illness. What is he trying to be “safe” from? Here’s a suggestion, instead of spending fortunes on safe rooms, private security guards, armored limos and the rest, agree to higher taxes on that fortune and be an advocate for healthier, safer communities that we do not have to be afraid of or be “safe” from.