Grassroots Groundswell

Three friends and I tried an experiment in sociable cooking this past weekend, and, while we’re a little tired and sore from standing and stirring for six hours, we had a lot of fun, and each wound up with many meals to freeze and serve later for our families.

I got the idea from the trend in meal preparation services - businesses that offer customers a choice of recipes, and then a scheduled session to assemble ready-to-freeze meals from fresh, nutritious ingredients that have already been prepared by the meal prep staff. It’s pleasant to cook in a friendly group of people who also like good food, and it’s nice to not have to think about “what’s for dinner?” among the other stresses of overfilled everyday To-Do lists.

Since October, I’ve gone about once a month to a meal prep place in Bethlehem PA, but the more I think about finding ways to reduce gasoline use and increase our family’s consumption of locally-grown foods, the less I want to drive such a distance for dinners. I do realize that ovens require cooking gas, and freezers take electricity, but think that most of making renewable energy like solar and wind power work for our society will be about re-localizing the daily work of living to cut down on automobile and truck use, and perhaps slowing down the pace of life enough so that leisurely cooking and sharing meals will again be practical.

Anyway, I went to the library and found a bunch of books on “make ahead cookery,” including two that were especially useful: Frozen Assets, and Frozen Assets: Lite and Easy, both by Deborah Taylor-Hough. We picked some recipes, planned the shopping list, got the ingredients and then spent an afternoon chopping, mixing, mashing, boiling, saute-ing, washing dishes, and talking - kids playing in the backyard outside. We also came up with lots of ideas about how to do it better next time.

It seems as though these sociable cooking projects may be part of a larger international trend. For example, Vancouver, Canada has a Community Kitchens website with lots of helpful information, as do Australia and other places.

At the council meeting last week, I think the borough council voted unanimously to consolidate several election districts and eliminate five districts (16, 17, 18,19, and 20) in the process, although it may be that they voted to put the matter up for public hearing and a final vote at their meeting May 14, as stated in a Courier-News legal notice.

During pollworking at the general election last November, word of this impending change was framed mostly as a way to improve efficiency and reduce the number of pollworkers needed per election, since it’s quite difficult to recruit new pollworkers to replace the aging cohort. Another possibility is that exceptionally low turnout in these districts in the last two general elections have rendered them not worthy of their own districts.

But my friend Bernice Paglia, who blogs on Plainfield government and politics at Plaintalker, alerted me to the fact this happened in Plainfield, reducing the number of districts from 42 to 34, and thereby diluting the potential power of particularly low-income districts, because each electoral district can, legally, send two representatives to the town’s Democratic and Republican party committees. These groups, in turn, send representatives to the Somerset County Democratic and Republican party committees.

There are 21 municipalities in Somerset County. This means that if North Plainfield reduces the size of its borough committees by 10 members per committee, it will also reduce the borough’s potential political clout at the county level, which is where candidates for county, state and federal office are selected. It’s quite likely that lack of local participation lies behind the proposed changes, and that some sign of interest from residents could avert the erosion of local political power. I’ll update this news as I get more information about the proposed changes.

Of particular interest: what are some of the reasons why people have become so disinterested in politics? There’s no shortage of good reasons for citizens to be turned off by the prospect of participation, but reader thoughts on the subject would be most welcome, because now may be a good moment for sideline-sitters to get involved again, with a conscious intention to change the things that keep people disengaged.

It’s collective bargaining time, when public employees like police officers, firefighters, and teachers, with their labor unions, negotiate employment contracts with their employers - in this case the the Borough of North Plainfield. The subject came up at this week’s council meeting, when Frank D’Amore Sr. expressed the hope that:

“…one of the primary focuses of these negotiations will be how to reduce the $1.5 million that we tax payers are contributing toward our employees’ medical benefits. We need to follow the example of private industry and have our employees pay for part of those benefits…Many residents have had to adjust our lifestyles in order to continue to live here. The property owners of North Plainfield need some tax relief from the Borough and our elected officials can provide that relief.”

It’s well-known that, compared to other industrialized nations, Americans spend a huge amount on health care, for less than fantastic care. It’s enormously expensive for individuals, for businesses and for public employers; a whopping 16% of our citizens have no insurance at all; and in public health studies, America scores relatively low among other industrialized nations. It’s well-known that union membership - and the political power that comes from strong participation - has declined in recent decades, although public employees employed by local governments are still the most unionized of all workers. It’s also well-known that executive compensation packages for the highest-paid corporate executives have shot out of the stratosphere.

Steve Earle, on his Jerusalem album, sums it up in “Amerika v. 6.0:”

…Look around
There’s doctors down on Wall Street
Sharpenin’ their scalpels and tryin’ to cut a deal
Meanwhile, back at the hospital
We got accountants playin’ God and countin’ out the pills
Yeah, I know, that sucks – that your HMO
Ain’t doin’ what you thought it would do
But everybody’s gotta die sometime and we can’t save everybody
It’s the best that we can do…

But is it the best that we can do? What’s striking to me about the way these issues play out locally is that there are at least two possible directions. People who live and work in New Jersey, like people everywhere, are simultaneously the local taxpayers, weighed down by high property taxes, and the workers - public and private - increasingly required to bear a higher burden of their health care costs.

When the home-owning taxpayers in Town A cut the benefits for the police, firefighters and teachers working in Town A, while those workers, as home-owning taxpayers in Town B, cut the benefits for the public employees of Town B, who may be hardworking folks who live in Town A, who wins?

An alternative to the “race to the bottom” scenario is for the people of Town A and Town B to make common cause with each other, find out where the wealth has gone, and claim it back. The future of collective bargaining may not look quite like the unionizing of the past, but it seems like some form of cooperation will pop up soon, because there comes a point where the belts can’t be tightened anymore.

Tonight was awards night for the police officers, firefighters and emergency medical technicians who serve North Plainfield. The awards were given out at the regular borough council meeting - which, effective this evening, will be held at the Vermeule Community Center while renovations at Borough Hall are completed.

The NP Police Department’s recent accreditation was recognized - our town is now one of only 23 in New Jersey to meet the standards set by the NJ Association of Chiefs of Police.

But the individual and team merit awards were most interesting, because as a civilian, it’s rare to hear all the things these dedicated people do to keep us, and the rule of law, safe throughout the year, listed all at one time. Officers were honored for tracking down the attacker who stabbed a man to death; disarming people with unauthorized guns; chasing and catching would-be burglars, bank robbers and carjackers; breaking up fights; chasing and catching cocaine dealers and marijuana dealers; finding lost children; pulling people out of burning buildings and smashed cars; saving lives with CPR and advanced first aid; and putting out fires - literal and figurative.

As a lefty social justice activist, I’ve often found myself at odds with police in cities like Tucson, New York and Washington D.C., penned in by riot gear and barricades, and anxious that the police are most interested in provoking illegal behavior so as to clear protestors from the streets.

But the students in my History of People’s Movements class - most of whom are in their 70s and 80s, tell stories with another perspective on police. As children in the 1930s and 1940s, they grew up with neighborhood cops who lived and worked - often on foot patrol - in the same town. The police knew the residents as friends and neighbors, not just potential law-breakers, and felt obliged (on- or off-duty) to keep an eye out, set a wayward child straight and have a quiet talk with the parents later, to reinforce the message that respect - for self and for others - is the very foundation of civil society.

Despite the forces of disintegration - time-starved families, long commutes from barely affordable homes to barely liveable wages, and funding shortfalls for many public services - it seems like North Plainfield tries to create much the same atmosphere of mutual respect here. Tonight was one way the town collectively gets to say: “Thank you.”

I walked across town to visit the Watchung Avenue Presbyterian Church this Sunday morning, as the first part of a series for this blog exploring the religious communities at worship and at work in North Plainfield.

During the children’s story, Rev. Brooks Smith held up a sculpture of St. Francis of Assisi, and told the kids about St. Francis being known for his love of nature and his legendary ability to talk to animals. The sermon, a reflection on St. Peter’s letters, explored the meaning of human suffering within the lives of individual Christians, Christian families and Christian communities, and Rev. Smith quoted a poem by Wendell Berry. I can’t remember which one, but I love “The Peace of Wild Things:”

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Rev. Smith also quoted Thomas Merton. Again, I can’t remember the exact quote, but it had to do with starting with ourselves in working to change the world, and there are lots of other good Merton quotes, on that and other subjects, here.

Back to Earth Day, the InterPress Service has a good article Happiness is a Smaller Eco-Footprint, about the importance of small, local and even individual efforts to cope with the demands of climate change, and about the hope within the crisis.

The weather these last few days has been sunny, blue-skied warmth, and it’s been great to see so many people out enjoying it - riding bikes, taking walks, playing in the yards, mucking around in their gardens. There’s a rumor that the Washington Park Historic District may revive the annual block party this spring, and another friend told me she’s wanted to put together an outdoor movie screening to project silent films onto the outside wall of the Holy Cross Episcopal Church building. Good things happening.

In response to the letters on my Smile Train post, I want to say a few things. One is that I’m glad anytime controversial topics of huge importance to everyone can be discussed in public forums. I also value free speech a great deal: it’s an important human right, one that should be used vigorously and often in societies aspiring to freedom for all people, and I think America is still only aspiring to be a free country - we haven’t got there yet.

I don’t believe freedom is bought by the blood of soldiers. I ascribe to Utah Phillips’ views, quoted at Free Radio Berkeley: “The state can’t give you free speech, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free…”

Second, I too have relatives who are military veterans of past conflicts and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. My pacifist views are well-known through letters in the Courier-News the past few years, but nonetheless undergo changes over time, as all people’s views do. I currently think that war may have been the best way to solve certain types of conflicts in the past, but in the present world of interwoven cultures and the overwhelming destructive power of weapons of mass destruction, war is no longer the lesser of two or more evils: it has too much potential to destroy everyone and everything.

I came to this view upon reading a speech by Martin Luther King Jr., - who was also honored during the Smile Train show with displays of his quotes, including: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ “

During his acceptance speech for the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, King said: “…man’s proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good…”

King was firmly non-violent in all of his work, and put his views especially strongly in his April 4, 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: a Time to Break the Silence. It’s his moral leadership, and that of Jesus, that I attempt to follow in my work.

Last night I ran lights for the annual Smile Train Show, put on at the high school by the students and teachers of West End Elementary School under the direction of Mrs. Buzzy Durkin and the school’s service club. It was the eighth year for the project, which has raised money to buy 80 “smiles” for children with cleft palate and cleft lip since 1999. It was fun for me to sit in the booth again and reminisce about my techie days at the Civic Little Theatre, which has grown a lot since I worked there during high school and college. Speaking of technical equipment, since the school budget passed this week, the 30-year old lighting and sound system in the high school auditorium is finally slated for much needed updates. And, I heard, the town’s track teams may be able to host track meets at home next year for a change, because the budget also includes money to bring the track up to code.

Anyway, the kids in last night’s show were terrific, and I found the first song: “Isle of Hope, Isle of Tears” especially moving, because the children were asked to work with their parents to put together costumes showing the traditional clothing of their immigrant forebears. Because North Plainfield’s population is so diverse, the panoply of costumes was staggering. Lederhosen and medieval Celtic dresses. Brilliant saris and plain white robes with kafiyeh scarves. Native American tunics and headdresses. Tiered white dresses, worn by little girls with long dark hair and bright red flowers tucked behind one ear, and striped sarapes worn by little boys in straw hats. Embroidered Russian overshirts with high black boots. African cloaks with intricate colorful zig-zag patterns. My favorite was a little boy in a fur vest wearing a Viking helmet with two horns, although sadly, he couldn’t wear it during the show for fear of poking other kids in the eye. I don’t even know the names of most of the garments, but they were worn by children born of parents, grandparents, great-grandparents from Guatemala, Honduras, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, France, Ghana, Nigeria, Mexico, Germany, Slavic countries, Sweden, Colombia, India and dozens of other countries.

The Smile Train Show always includes a few routines to “salute the armed forces,” and this year included a reading of the names of more than 50 veterans related to West End students and staff, and more than a dozen military personnel who have served or are serving in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. I learned last night that North Plainfield has not only an ROTC program at the high school but also a Junior ROTC program at the middle school, from which 40 fifth and sixth grade kids will soon take a field trip to visit West Point Academy.

The contrast was profound, between the tremendous sight of children from so many different countries and cultures singing and dancing together on a brightly lit stage, simultaneously sharing their uniqueness and their commonality, and the thought that some of them might someday join the armed forces, to train for careers in violence, and might even be sent back to their homelands to attack their own cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. Perhaps as we humans become more intermingled, culturally, we’ll increasingly see all wars as internecine, and better resist calls to harm our kin.

I know several people - friends and neighbors - with a strong interest in helping the North Plainfield community thrive. Unfortunately, they’ve found that approaching the borough council with ideas, as individuals, tends to lead to “Nice idea” pats on the head, and no concrete action.

One area where the borough council could take a better approach is incubating local small businesses, many of which are viable businesses offering vital goods and services that simply can’t afford Somerset St. commercial rents. The borough council could put together some combination of tax breaks and rent subsidies to allow local people to put sound businesses in vacant storefronts downtown. One scenario, adapted from Jane Jacobs’ proposals (Ch. 17 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities) about subsidizing dwellings, would peg commercial rents to a reasonable proportion of business income, with the difference between the tenants’ payments and “market rates” made up by a subsidy from the local and/or state government. As the business grew, the tenants’ share would increase and the subsidized share would decrease until the tenants were paying full market rates.

To head in this direction, however, people interested in pursuing it have to band together and put together a coherent plan to counter the apparent vacuum of ideas from the borough council. We might even be able to get something like the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia (thanks to Deborah for the lead) to open up downtown, to sustain community collaboration on such local initiatives.

On another subject, another friend steered me to the Wagner Farm Arboretum in Warren, as a model for the community farm at Villa Maria I posted about last week. (Thanks Jen).

Update 1/27/08: I recently learned that the owner of the restaurant at 503 Park in Scotch Plains considered opening his restaurant in North Plainfield on Somerset Street before choosing Scotch Plains. He chose Scotch Plains because he couldn’t afford the commercial rents on Somerset.