When my Twitter feed for today posts in a little bit, you’ll see some random tweets about Hartford/West Hartford bashing. I figure I should probably explain myself a bit, because Twitter makes everything short of funny seem curt to me.

My general issue is simple: There’s too much negativity in local politics. It is, quite frankly, worse than the national debate because the “theys” being created are literally neighbors. Disagreements seems to inevitably reduce themselves to demonization.

The trigger for this conversation was Helder’s complaint about the Blue Back Square (BBS) development in town. Complaints about BBS are a semi-annoying subject to me because it comes up again and again in WH itself, as it gets brought up ad nauseum by folks who opposed the project. Now, I’ll admit to being in a grumpy mood before this started because of other things going on. I also realize he meant this as a joke. Also, this isn’t about Helder himself. I think he gets most of what I’m about to say. I don’t want to just let it go, though, because these sentiments come up pretty regularly in town discussions (read the comments for any Courant article that talks about Hartford, for example)

With those disclaimers out of the way, what really got me, though, was the idea BBS was elitist, actively designed to keep low income and working class families out of the center. The conversation flowed from there, but this was where I got my hackles raised.

This is worthy of a longer conversation, and probably one in person, so I’m going to keep these short. Would love to talk about this further. Consider this my conversation starter, basically what I was trying to get across via Twitter:

• I generally agree with folks concerned about the health of Hartford, of urban flight in general, and the prevailing wage/class issues that created the suburbs in the first place. Even though I live in West Hartford, believe it or not.
• I’m not really sure that it’s “wrong” in any sense to have spaces that cater to people with higher incomes. (the involvement of public funds makes this more complicated, certainly)
• West Hartford center, for better or for worse, catered to the same crowd before and after BBS’s arrival, at least since I’ve been living here (2003). The longer term shift (say, from 20 years ago) is, to me, part of the greater urban flight story and not endemic to West Hartford itself. Further, BBS itself is, at worst, a symptom of changes that have already happened in town, not the cause (or even an early sign) of the change itself.
• Debates about the health of the region, especially as we discuss greater regionalism and projects that have multi-town impacts, like new rail projects, would be more constructive if people on both sides would get past the us/them mentality. We’re neighbors. It’s natural to prioritize our own neighborhoods and towns, so the goal is to find mutually beneficial policies. (it would be helpful to express policies in those terms, too.)
• The name calling and using nearby towns as an epithet or pejorative is counterproductive, let alone being pointless.
• Finally, West Hartford isn’t uniformly wealthy or white, so the implications of drawing class/race divisions between Hartford and West Hartford ignores the living situation of thousands of WH residents.

That’s all I was trying to get across. I know I haven’t been in the area for decades or whatever, but I think that’s actually not a bad thing. Fresh perspective and all that jazz. Really, my bottom line is this: I’d love to see people talk about what we can do rather than attacking potential allies.

One last thought that seems related here: The trends in Hartford and in the interaction between the suburbs and the city don’t seem all that unique to me. Where do we have the conversation to talk about solutions to this problem? Where are they already happening? We don’t need to figure this out all over again by ourselves…

And Helder, we should get together at some point and grab a drink and you can fill me in on the history from your perspective. Would love to hear it.

A couple of folks from my office ended up going to the XL Center in Hartford to see Barack Obama’s speech yesterday. Aaron has photos up on his Flickr account. Click the image below to see the set:

There were a few people there, it seems.

By way of a random Technorati click, I found the blog of a Georgia high school paper which made me search for an article about (phew!) how the Hartford Public Schools are now fining students for using profanity at school:

Students in Hartford, Conn., now have to pay for what they say – literally.

Under a new plan, 2,800 students at two high schools in the district could be subject to $103 fines for uttering profanity on school premises.

Officials there call it a last-ditch effort to create a learning space free from the linguistic irreverence so commonplace in society today.

“We have had kids that just curse out their teachers in the hallways,” says Zandralyn Gordon, the acting principal at Hartford Public High School. “That cannot continue.”

…

Experts say some schools are cesspools for swearing because disciplinary action is not strictly enforced. That was not the case in Hartford. Suspensions were handed down for obscenities, but administrators say they were seen as vacations and did nothing to improve unruly behavior. Now, says Ms. Gordon, “they are not going to curse, because it is going to cost.”

The fines, issued by police officers in the schools on a case-by-case basis, must be paid or students must appear in court as they would for a speeding ticket.

A main impetus behind the program was to reduce violence – and the suspensions and expulsions that were byproducts of that violence. “We find one kid swearing at another kid, the other kid responds,” says Cathy Carpino, the president of the Hartford Federation of Teachers, “and it goes from being a verbal altercation to a physical one. It needs to be stopped.”

Not sure what to say except that I’m curious what happens to students that can’t pay. It seems to me, but perhaps I’m wrong, that by the time the students enter high school, at least some of their swearing is already learned. I also wonder what happens if you stub your toe and yell out something like “shit” or “damn”? Seems like a steep fine when it’s not directed at anyone, especially if a “main impetus” is to reduce violence.

It’ll be interesting to see how it gets enforced. Heidi may have more on this at her blog later.

By the way, students at Pebblebrook (the school in Georgia), um, teachers and students are actually allowed to talk about religion in school. It would be impossible to teach large chunks of western history without talking about religion. What is not allowed is teaching students how to be good Christians. There’s a difference that ought to be obvious.