Robert Forrant
In a recent article in The Atlantic Richard Florida wrote that during the economic depression at the end of the 19th century, "the country remade itself from an agricultural power into an industrial one."
After the 1930s and the Great Depression, the country once again remade itself. "It discovered a new way of living, working, and producing, which contributed to an unprecedented period of mass prosperity. At critical moments, Americans have always looked forward, not back, and surprised the world with our resilience."
Can we do it again?
Substitute Greater Lowell for America and we have the questions that motivate this column. How do we reconfigure our region and craft a well-conceived response to the tragically ruined economy? Who ought to be involved in the conversations?
While it's clear that none of us along our proverbial "Main Streets" made the cynical, stupid, and in some cases criminal decisions that led to the housing meltdown, the failure of financial institutions and the chain reaction of business and corporate failures this is small solace, for during previous economic crises in our nation's history we often searched for scapegoats to saddle with the blame.
Driving out the Chinese from the West Coast at the end of the 19th century, violent racial cleansings in numerous American cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in northern cities after the first World War -- even the hooded countenances of its members marching down the streets of the nation's capital -- and the harshly restrictive federal immigration laws passed in the mid-1920s, are examples of this.
Now, because Lowell is one of the U.S.'s most ethnically diverse small cities and it has distinguished itself in the past as a place of educational, political, and social innovation and adjustment, how we respond to the economic crisis offers an interesting look into our collective soul.
Look back for new beginnings
Influences from beyond Lowell's boundaries have always affected its ups and downs. For example, Frederick Coburn, in his 1920 History of Lowell and Its People observed that when the labor supply from New England's rural towns was exhausted, employers sent recruiters to places like Quebec and Greece for workers. "Adventurous folks from other lands," Coburn writes, "seeking the advantages of a political democracy, are welcomed as workers. A few members of a nationality establish themselves, and these are quickly followed by others from the same foreign town or countryside."
In other words, Coburn's immigrant story is part of our present-day one and shapes how we respond as a community to the current economic malaise. Words by Lowell's poet laureate Paul Marion -- I've anointed him such -- come to mind: "Our culture, the social protoplasm in which we love, work, dream, /... animates each frame./ We are what we were as much as what we are." ("A Higher Level of Notation" 1986).
Back and forth we go
One effort to promote a badly needed dialog comes through Gov. Deval Patrick's establishment of The New Americans Agenda, "a comprehensive statewide initiative to better integrate refugees and immigrants into Massachusetts' economic and civic life." Through it, the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants is developing policy recommendations on community integration based in part on what they hear during a six-city listening tour. Sadly, nearly all of our elected public officials failed to attend the Jan. 21 conversation at the Lowell Senior Center.
Time conflicts can arise among individuals with busy schedules, but nearly everyone -- really? The good news: More than 200 people from the region's immigrant and refugee populations showed up to discuss their concerns. Notably, Lowell police superintendent Kenneth Lavallee was there. Key questions considered were: 1. What are the challenges to integration currently faced by immigrants and refugees and their receiving communities? 2. How can we best develop strategies to overcome those challenges?
Commenting on the hearing ONELowell's Executive Director Victoria Fahlberg told me, "I have never seen a level of support before from nonprofits and faith-based organizations so focused on the concerns of immigrants and refugees. So often their needs are lumped in with concerns related to poverty that their specific issues fail to be heard. I was amazed at the large number of newcomers who were present as well as the diversity of newcomers who came -- even our newest refugee groups, Burmese and Iraqis, were present."
Those in attendance described the fear permeating newcomer communities as a consequence of two recent immigration raids. Concerns were also expressed over equal opportunity in municipal employment, educational services, and in running for political office. (Note: Lowell Telecommunication will be running a one-hour program based on the testimony at the hearing.)
Repairing fractures, walking forward
Absorb the words of a 1977 Lowell profile prepared by Boston University's sociology department. "To walk from one end of Merrimack Street to the other is to experience the mosaic and vitality of ethnicity in Lowell. In what was formerly referred to as 'Little Canada,' the elderly on the street discuss in French the visit of a politician. Not far from there, near the courthouse, a Greek family still makes phylo pastry 'like in the old country' and others come and go handling in Greek the daily business of living. Next to the recently arrived Jordan Marsh Department Store is a small Lebanese and Syrian restaurant where the customers as well as the owners speak Arabic. At the top of the street the Puerto Rican 'bodega' sell(s) plantains and mangos, ripe from the Caribbean sun, to the Spanish-speaking community."
A similar description -- with the names of some groups changed -- could be made if we made that walk today. We need to listen to the people on these and other streets. The fractures in our current social fabric require critical care and the intelligence and the creativity of the many will be more useful than the "supposed intelligence" of a handful of elected or appointed officials who assume omniscience. After all, if this group were so smart why has the current crisis befallen us?
The deepening recession and the challenges it poses are too large for us to cling to narrow mindedness. In the Lowell City Council, at UMass Lowell as it continues its restructuring, and in the Commonwealth's Legislature as it applies the economic stimulus bill, carefully listening to all constituencies is essential. Only then will solutions to foreclosures and joblessness be crafted that make sense for everyone.
Robert Forrant is a professor in UMass Lowell's Department of Regional Economic and Social Development. He can be reached at Robert_Forrant@uml.edu.
This story appeared in the Lowell Sun on Sunday, February 22, 2009