The Accident(s) of Birth: Opportunity Knocks

“You’ve got the world by the strings, kid. Just don’t blow it.”

-- Advice from a Caddy, Myopia Hunt Club, c. 2000

Last week, Boston Globe columnist Shirley Leung wrote a terrific column on the need to engage white men in ongoing efforts to make a more inclusive, more opportunistic society—in Boston and across the country. Leung quotes Colette Phillips, President and CEO of Colette Phillips Communications, Inc. (a Boston-based public relations and marketing communications firm), who stated, “In Boston, we need to create a new normal — white men at the table. You can’t talk about inclusion and exclude.”

Phillips’ incisive and earnest sentiment is all-too-often absent from discussions about a wide variety of issues—from reproductive justice (viewed as a “woman’s” concern, rather than a central element of public health for all) to corrections/policing policy (where elected officials often seek to curry favor in communities of color, but do little to engage white voters on the same issues).

This absence is particularly notable since political parties often speak about the need to embrace a “big tent” theory of coalition politics that bridges the divide between many segments to achieve a governing consensus. Neither party has done a particularly good job at this in recent years—as both Republican Tea Partiers and Democratic purists have imposed strict litmus tests on candidates, hollowing out the middle of the American political spectrum in the process.

There is plenty more to say on that subject in later posts. However, today I want to focus on a central idea raised by Leung’s column: how people privileged by the accident of birth should approach (and use) that privilege.

A Road to Opportunity
Myopia Hunt Club, Bay Road, South Hamilton, Mass.

I’m one of those privileged souls—a paradigmatic example of a beneficiary of centuries of prejudice. Some of the factors are immediately obvious to anyone who sees me. I’m White. I’m male. I’m rich. I’m healthy.

Other factors secured to no credit of my own aren’t apparent on the surface, but also form a basis for my privileged position. I’m an American Citizen. I’m heterosexual. I grew up in a two-parent/two-income household. I had a network of people who looked out for me as I was growing up (teachers, Little League coaches, fellow congregants at the First Church of Wenham, the parents of close friends, etc.).

The caddy who offered me advice at the age of 16 was not so blessed. He grew up poor, in a single-parent home in Peabody. His mature approach to offering counsel to his naive co-caddy was evident, both from his willingness to cop to mistakes he made along the way and his steadfast effort to make sure that I didn’t let the riches that I had inherited go to my head. More importantly, by characterizing my position as one in which I had “the world by the strings,” he made it abundantly clear that the world would judge me less by the opportunities provided by Grace, and more by what I chose to do with those opportunities.

Taking advantage of opportunities is, to some degree, a straightforward proposition. Work hard. Pay attention and adhere steadfastly to First Principles. Devote your professional life to your most cherished values.

The harder part is resisting the urge to judge others by the opportunities they have/don’t have. It is telling that the Ten Commandments include a directive not to covet what others have, but do not include a similar, more affirmative edict to do your best with what you’ve been given. Whether it’s “real estate envy” in New York or jealously about the personal or professional lives of friends or colleagues that always seem one step ahead of ours, the human inclination to worry about what we lack, rather than revel in what we have, threatens our ability to seize on opportunities as they arise and undermines our capacity to work with people to solve collective problems.

In the end, no matter what your race, class, sex, or creed, we all bear the burden of not “blowing it”—of seizing on the opportunities that come our way to better the lives of our fellow citizens.

Enon: Dimensionality, Time, and the “Awful Miracle” of Life

“Even as our own universe settled down to a comfortable homey expansion, the rest of the cosmos will continue blowing up, spinning off other bubbles endlessly, a concept known as the multiverse.”

--“Space Ripples Reveal Big Bang’s Smoking Gun,” New York Times (17 Mar. 2014)

In 2010, Paul Harding—a native of Wenham, Mass.—won the Pulitzer Prize for his debut novel, Tinkers. It was an unlikely victory, to say the least. After years of receiving rejection letters from publishing houses—many of whom, in Harding’s words, wondered if he understood “the pace of life today”—Tinkers was published by tiny outfit Bellevue Literary Press.

This week, I picked up Harding’s second novel, Enon, for no other reason other that the fact that the novel was set in Wenham, the sister town to my hometown of Hamilton, Mass (referred to, in the novel, as Hillham). It is a funny feeling to intimately know the seemingly fictional places Harding describes (the Tea House, William Fairfield Drive, Peter Hill, the golf courses, Enon Lake, the canal) and to have taken part in many of the traditions referenced in the book (the Memorial Day parade from the Civil War Monument to the cemetery and back evoking the most visceral memories).

 

Whether you feel those nostalgic sentiments or not, Enon challenges our vision of the world as being a unitary whole, and instead insists on the multidimensionality of time and space.

“Just beneath our feet, on the other side of the surface of the earth, there is another, subterranean Enon which conceals its secret business by conducting it too slowly for its purposes to be observed by the living.”

That “other” Enon is itself, multidimensional. “[T]hat old earth…the cross sections of years and centuries and generations, folded up into the curled layers of prehistoric winters and antique summers.”

It’s an image that comes naturally in small, New England towns, where the weight of history is acutely felt in a way that never can be in a metropolis that is constantly reinventing itself (like New York) or a young city at the edge of a continent that remains, to this day, on the frontier (like San Francisco).

In Massachusetts, town after town greets natives and travelers alike with the same signage, proudly announcing—in understated but no uncertain terms—the town’s date of incorporation (which is almost invariably before the founding of the American Republic). Indeed, if population is the hallmark of the town lines of the Plains and the Rockies, in New England, it is history and time.

My mother often said that the afterlife is another dimension and that her loved ones communicate with her through space time in the form of birds that come to frequent our backyard feeder (I’ve asked Mom—if indeed she has the choice—to return to me in the form of the black-capped chickadee, the official bird of the Commonwealth). It’s a comforting concept, albeit one that I’ve never had the spiritual stomach to truly believe. And yet, it seems eminently believable—scientific even—in the wake of both our continued discoveries regarding the origins of the Universe and the magnetic pull of history.

For some of us, that pull is so profound that the reality of existence in our given moment seems wrong. As the protagonist of Enon describes it, the fear of falling into the “old earth” described above was that the odds seemed so impossibly slim (“one in a million or even slighter”) that one would reemerge in the right place at the right time and not be “hoisted from the ground a dead Puritan or quadruped fossil.”

But if that is indeed true, then it would seemingly follow that those who do “fall” into tears in the space time continuum are, more often than not, spit out into a world far removed from their soul’s internal clock.

Despite this possibility, Enon challenges us to view the “curse,” “condemnation,” and “provocation,” of having been “conjured up from a clot of dirt and hay and lit on fire and sent stumbling among the rocks and bones of this ruthless earth,” as a miraculous opportunity to be present in whatever moment you happen to find yourself, and to simply and unabashedly feel.

Cupid's Arrow: Consolidating Governments to Save Taxpayer Money

This Valentine’s Day, let’s train Cupid’s Arrow at local governments in New York and Massachusetts—a surefire way to streamline services and save taxpayer money.

New York State has over 10,000 local governments—cities, towns, villages, counties, special water districts, sewer districts, fire districts, etc. These overlapping jurisdictions impose significant and unnecessary administrative and operating costs on the public, leading the Empire State to have the highest property taxes in the nation.

Governor Andrew Cuomo has taken concrete steps to nudge municipalities to consolidate services—or, perhaps more directly, to provide an incentive for citizens to push for consolidation forcefully at the ballot box.

The Governor announced his latest consolidation initiative in his State of the State address last month. The plan creates a two-year freeze on property taxes for upstate municipalities that have agreed to abide by a 2 percent property tax cap. In year one, homeowners earning under $500,000 would receive a 2 percent tax rebate simply for living in a community that respected the tax cap. In the second year, homeowners would only qualify for the credit if their municipality submits a plan to consolidate or share services with their neighbors that saves 1 percent of the levy a year for three years.

While the push for consolidation has been opposed by unions representing municipal workers—who understandably fear the loss of jobs that comes with greater efficiency—the long term effects on the economy of upstate New York should be positive. Instead of having individuals duplicate efforts town by town, those people will gravitate toward more productive employment. Phasing in consolidation via attrition may be one way to achieve a compromise with unions, while securing long-term savings.

In addition to nudging local governments toward consolidation, the State should take steps to eliminate red tape that prevents counties from exploring joint procurement of health insurance and other goods/services. As Stephen Acquario, the executive director of the New York State Association of Counties, told City and State, “There is no reason why a county should not be authorized to reach out to towns, villages, cities, school districts and centralize procurement of health insurance for all of the local governments within its jurisdiction.”

New York is perhaps the most egregious example of the proliferation of government. However, Bay State is not immune from this waste. While Massachusetts eliminated most county government between 1997-2000 (sheriffs and county courts remain vestiges of the old guard), additional progress can and should be made.

To that end, Governor Deval Patrick launched the Community Innovation Challenge (CIC) grant program in 2012, designed to encourage sharing of services. In two years, the program has invested $6.25 million in 49 projects in 197 municipalities across the Commonwealth.

Last week, Hamilton and Wenham—long partners in running the Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District—received a CIC grant of $90,000 to continue their efforts in forming the State’s first-ever combined Public Facilities and Infrastructure Department. This continues a trend of shared service delivery by the two towns, which included the opening of Massachusetts’ first joint library in 2001.

All too often, conservatives lead this type of streamlining. But the truth is that efficient government is even more important for liberals, who believe that government should play a central role in ensuring opportunity for all, investing in public infrastructure, and enacting policy to protect the environment and strengthen the middle class. After all, if we want the public to place its trust in government's ability to invest their hard-earned money, we must do everything we can to make every dollar count.

Experimentation and Opportunity: Essex County Schools

[A] single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.

-- Louis Brandeis, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court,

New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262 (1932).

As reported in today’s Boston Globe, Governor Deval Patrick awarded five grants totaling $50,000 to the Pentucket Regional School District for innovative learning academies within existing schools. Other Essex County schools also received grants, including the O’Maley Innovation Middle School in Gloucester and the Tilton Innovation School in Haverhill.

The Commonwealth’s commitment to flexibility and experimentation in education is one of the critical reasons why Massachusetts’ public schools consistently rank near the top in the nation. Pentucket’s five programs will run the gamut—from an International Baccalaureate program and visual arts to a program focused on safety and public service.

What is most critical now is for the State to have measures in place to objectively analyze the successes and failures of each academy so that best practices can be shared with other districts and other ideas can be dropped if deemed ineffective.

But experimentation is not enough to ensure that all students have access to a quality education. Cities and towns in the Commonwealth that have excellent schools also have a responsibility to open their doors to students who, largely by accident of birth, do not have access to the same high-quality education.

One such school is my alma mater—Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School. Last week, the HW School Committee reauthorized the School Choice program at the Regional. There is no doubt that School Choice imposes significant financial costs on districts that welcome students to their schools. Indeed, it is high time that the State cast a critical eye on the amount of School Choice tuition (paid to HW by the town of the choice student), which has not changed since it was first set by the state legislature at $5,000 in 1991.

Nevertheless, the benefits of choice—both to the students who take advantage of it and the broader student body—should not be underestimated (and I don’t just say that because my sister married her high school sweetheart, who just happened to be a choice student from Essex).

Choice students add a diverse array of experience/perspective to a class that, for the most part, grows up in a relatively insulated bubble from K-8. Furthermore, with demographics data projecting fewer resident students at the high school over the next 10 years, School Choice students help the Regional maintain a critical mass of students necessary for a robust, engaging curriculum.

As Horace Mann, the Father of American Public Education and a Massachusetts native himself, said 165 years ago:

Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery…[and] [t]he people of Massachusetts have…appreciated the truth that the unexampled prosperity of the State…is attributable to the education, more or less perfect, which all its people have received.

The Commonwealth is stronger when we all have common experience and opportunity and I am proud that my hometown and my home county continue to embody the principles of Horace Mann and Louis Brandeis.