Community

I live in a densely settled neighborhood near a large metropolis. I was born into this type of living. I grew up in a densely populated small city next to Boston. My first memories are set in an apartment in an old, three-unit tenement building. My first playground was the street.

One of the side effects of the increasingly mobile American culture is the loss of bedrock populations in neighborhoods. In my own city, the transition in every neighborhood is visible and palpable. I walk quite a bit around the city and witness the constant changes. My city is mostly populated by people of low-to-middle incomes. The ripples of immigration are touching many neighborhoods as well. This was true of my native city in my childhood. I am familiar with it.

Despite all the benefits of diversity and mobility, the losses are also considerable. Change is never all good or all bad. It simply is.

My particular neighborhood has a scattered, diminishing long-term population, bound to it by socioeconomics largely. The poorer sons and daughters of original homeowners have stayed in their humble family homes, attached English-style townhomes in four-or-five-house rows. Because the houses are at the low end of price for my city, new immigrants have often bought or rented when houses come on the market.

The older residents all know each other. They have had their bonds and their feuds over the decades. There are cliches of old women who know each other for various reasons, such as shared church or club. The general attitude of these older residents towards new ones is cool, reserved observation. It takes some effort to get them to say "hello".

The newer residents, mostly foreign-born, stay to themselves. A few have developed curbside relationships based on shared nationality or ethnicity. Those of us who are American-born and new to the neighborhood manage to connect randomly with a neighbor here or there, but the reserve of old to new never quite melts.

Some may say this is a Bostonian or New England phenomenon. Bostonians have a repuation of being reserved. New Englanders have a reputation of being parochial. However, I feel this is more than that. I think this is genuine culture shock. And, I think this in part accounts for the current extremes of anger at the political process in the United States. After all, who is screaming loudest? Those who are screaming loudest are those who live in cities like mine, which voted overwhelmingly for Tea-Party-sponsored Scott Brown for the U.S. Senate after decades of being centrist Democrat.

The price of change is often discomfort and anxiety. Without a concerted effort, led by government in many cases, building community from isolated populations can take decades. And, how can the government build community when there is an absolute phobia in the U.S. about 'socialism'? This is a symptom of the absolute failure of the government to take control of immigration policy, and its failure to compensate American cities for its effects on public education, infrastructure and civic planning.

The key issue of immigration, in my opinion, is not legality or illegality. The key issue is community. If community is valued and fostered by government policy on local and national levels, the negative side effects of immigration can be minimized.

However, in the current exploitive political climate, dominated by corporate profit motives and tax avoidance, this is impossible. The wealthy interests in this country are obviously willing to sacrifice the community fiber, the social fiber, of the country to maintain their greedy accumulation of wealth. Wealth accumulation is the actual religion of our time. And, the gated community, the refuge of the wealthy, is the proof of it.