Salemtown needs to stay a place friendly to children

At the last Salemtown neighborhood association meeting, someone other than me (for which I am thankful) suggested to the officers that more social events be planned for families with children.

That request was made after the officers handed out a list of planned social events somewhat bereft of events explicitly child-friendly: a Mardi Gras Mixer, Pink Flamingo Happy Hour, Progressive Dinner, Chili Cook Off, Sip 'N Stroll. Those are all lovely events I'm sure, but they seem designed more for empty nesters or for parents with babysitters on constant call rather than for those of us who are committed to spending time with our children. I have experienced the Salemtown Halloween Block Party, which is apparently on for 2015, too. While it did not deter the number of kids that came through for candy, it was organized more as a street festival for the concert-and-beer crowd. The "kids tent" was a single table under a small awning.

I thought the officers could have taken the criticism more constructively than they did. They basically told the parent that she should participate in the social committee if she wanted to see more kid-friendly events because none of the members of the social committee have children. I believe that the suggestion was made with good intentions, but it did not come across as a constructive suggestion to me.

I should be perfectly honest and say that this was not the first time I have seen coolness expressed by empty nesters toward families with children in Salemtown. Across 10 years it has been a challenge at times and with some exceptions to convince them to either co-sponsor or join in more kid-friendly events. At times parents here have organized events on our own the absence of association sponsorship. We've had outings to parks and water parks. We've gone to get ice cream. We've attended puppet shows at the public library. In the fall we've gone to scout pumpkins at Farmers Market. One of our more popular regular events we organized apart from SNNA in the past was our "Kid Klatch" events. They were generally at Morgan Park, but one time we had a "Jane's Walk" to Bicentennial Mall ending with a picnic and kite-flying.

While SNNA may have a knack for planning adult-oriented events, I believe our association can do a better job of sponsoring and incorporating kid-friendly events. Here are a few suggestions:

• Rather than obliging parents to join a committee if they want to see events that their children can attend, invite the parents to meet with the social committee one-time or in a short series of coffees or lunches, kids in tow, so that the committee can get feedback for planning. Who knows, a couple of parents might take charge of their own suggestions to the committee. It is generally not effective or sensitive to tell people who suggest social events that they join the association's social committee. The reason we have committees is to divide the organizing labor and it becomes unrealistic to oblige every person who makes suggestions to join the committee. The committee would be come ridiculously and cumbersomely large under such logic. The social committee should field ideas on how to make their slate stronger, not dismiss those who cannot or will not serve.
• Put SNNA in front of the parade. If you don't produce social events for families with children, the parents are likely to go ahead and organize them without you. We did 3 years ago when we started to feel less support from the association. I have been to fewer and fewer Salemtown Neighbors social events since 2012, because frankly I want to spend my free time with family members. Until it sinks in at SNNA that they can actually get more Salemtown families to attend by attracting them with kid-friendly events, then I'll not likely attend many adult-oriented ones as I have in the distant past. To put it more positively: find events that parents are already planning and ask if the association can do anything to assist. Get SNNA's name on the event. What can it hurt?
• Use child-friendly social events as a tool to expand membership. I've lived here 10 years. Salemtown, unlike Germantown, has always had bunches of kids around the neighborhood. It is true now, more than ever. Daily in warmer weather I see young couples walking by with strollers. At times I wonder if we are undergoing a baby boom. Other parents on my block have play days for the kids that their kids go to school with. SNNA has to make more of an effort to attract these families and keep them in Salemtown. No one is asking empty nesters to open up their homes for our kids to barrel around their fragile decorations. But SNNA officers need to find a way to reach out to families with children, if for no other reason that it makes the association stronger and more diverse.
• Promote diversity. An urban neighborhood is generationally diverse when it has children as well as young adults, retirees, and middle aged-empty nesters. If Salemtown were a neighborhood exclusively dominated by empty nesters, it would be a tedious and boring place. I'm speaking as a person who did not have his first child until the age of 29; as one who will be an empty-nester once again in less than a decade. Any neighborhood worth its salt needs the presence of some children for enrichment.
• Express mutual interest by showing up once in a while. I have attended events in Salemtown to celebrate someone's promotion, birthday, engagement, marriage, move-in, move-out and a host of other special occasions that were important for me to support. On the other side of the ledger, I don't recall empty nesters showing up to one of my kid's basketball games or her art shows or her theater performances. I am not expressing resentment in that statement. I'm merely pointing out that one hand washes the other. It is unrealistic to expect parents to continue to find a babysitter to celebrate your milestones when you won't calendar and attend to those of their children. Mutuality, by definition, goes both ways.

I offer these suggestions in a spirit of engagement, because I firmly believe in enhancing the quality of life in Salemtown. Yes, our sociality is enhanced by Mardi Gras mixers, but it is also enhanced by puppet shows.

North Nashville may be a payday lenders' paradise, but it is a food desert

From the Community Food Advocates' blog:

there are currently 103,100 food insecure households in Davidson County or approximately 16.8% of the population.This includes both rural and urban residents, the elderly and disabled, and about 29,100 children ....

Four Nashville neighborhoods: North Nashville, JC Napier/Southeast Nashville, East Nashville, and Edgehill/South Nashville, are still considered food deserts

The fact that 30,000 kids live with food insecurity is shameful in a civil society. I would maintain that hunger and want have more to do with poor student performance than teachers or curriculum. Word to the reformers: you cannot innovate privation.

Allegations that assaults started at YMCA program and continued at North Nashville public school

The Gulch Ain't Shangri-La, Says One NY Times Mag Commenter

Serious drawbacks, yes:

Just spent yesterday considering a move to condo living in The Gulch. It is certainly an interesting place, but nothing below $150K available. No affordable housing, as far as I can see. No grocery store. No green space. Average age probably in the late 20’s to 30’s. Few babies/children/etc. Could not find one piece of information on urban gardening. Schools zoned for The Gulch are abysmal. All in all, if you are single or DINKs, it is a swell (underline swell) place.

As bright and shining as neighborhoods like the Gulch are, Nashville will never be a serious urban destination until it makes room for kids, good schools and more generational/income diversity in city neighborhoods.

What is it with these data-compromising government contractors and using children in branding privatization?

Is there some sort of fetish afoot in the use of images of children to market government services firms?

Senate Republicans Aim to Deny Certain Children Health Insurance

If you've ever seen a child bullied on a playground because of the actions of her parents, you know that the taunts are malicious for no other reason than the kid had nothing to do her parents' choices. The stigma was misplaced on an innocent person.

By that same logic, Senate Republicans in DC are bullies playing on current right-wing anti-immigrant anger to bar the children of immigrants from SCHIP and thus deny them health insurance that other kids get.  These children didn't choose to be born to illegal immigrants and they probably had little to do with their parents immigration choices. Why should the kids be punished? Why do Republicans hold a certain class of innocent children in such low regard?

Busting Up the Republicans' Palin Myth with Their Own "Mommy Penalty"

Pew brings the numbers:

Democrats were significantly more likely to vote for a candidate for Congress who is the mother of small children than to support an identical candidate who is the father of small children (33% vs. 24%). Democratic women in particular more strongly supported ... the mother than Andrew ... father (36% vs. 19%). Among Democratic men, neither gender nor parenthood made a difference.

Taken together, the findings suggest women with young children pay a "mommy penalty" among Republicans if they run for Congress. Among Democrats, by contrast, it's the fathers of small children who are at a disadvantage and it's the mothers who are more likely to be strongly supported.

These results echo the findings of other Pew surveys that show Republicans -- who are more likely to embrace traditional social values -- are far more troubled than Democrats by the long term trend toward mothers of young children working outside the home. In a 2007 survey, for example, some 53% of Republicans described this trend as bad for society, compared with just 38% of Democrats who felt the same way.

Might I suggest that the strong conservative embrace of the idea of Sarah Palin running is overcompensation for all of the conservative repression of gender equality and fairness at home and at work? It's either got to be repression or full-blown charisma envy. Otherwise, both the contradiction and the willingness suspend doubt and believe in Sarah Palin without ever actually touching her nail prints defy logic.

What Do You Want to Bet?

If Sarah Palin were progressive instead of conservative and she had a pregnant teenage daughter, the same conservative Palindrones singing her praises now would be blaming both her progressive values and her lack of involvement at home for the pregnancy.  Since she's conservative, her motherhood is sanctified and her career is justified.

Benefit of the Doubt for One Parent; Just Doubt for the Other

Compare and contrast a former Metro School Board Member's judgment of one politician parent vs. another:

Kay Brooks' response to Governor Sarah Palin, mother of 5 children (including a newborn), running for Vice President of the United States:

The women of the Brooks' household were so excited to see this strong woman, mom and wife [accepting the GOP nomination for VP]. I was so thankful my children got to see what was possible .... because she'd worked hard at serving her communities and that hard work was noticed.

Kay Brooks' response to Council Member David Briley, father of 1 child, during his past run for Mayor of Nashville:

Not good [that Briley had to miss the Council's English First vote to coordinate extended family care for his son, Sam]. It was about 8:00 when that vote was taken. I hope this was an unusual glitch and these folks work out the designated sitter issue. I feel for Sam. That's a long day for a small child. It's going to be a long campaign season too.

It seems to me that Kay Brooks shows nothing close to the degree of concern for the Palin children (especially little Trig) that she showed for Sam Briley (assuming her concern for Sam was authentic and not feigned in order to zing David Briley).

Palin Would Not Be Governor If Not for Community Organizers

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities.

- - Sarah Palin, GOP convention speech

One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.

- - Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Sarah Palin's attack on community organizers shows that she has no clue about the exacting job requirements of community organizers. Worse, she has no clue about her own debts to the history of community organizing in America, which stretches back to the 19th Century.

One of the most important books in the history of social movements is Robert Fisher's Let the People Decide. In that book Fisher traces the genealogy of community organizing from the 1880's, and if Gov. Palin knew that history she would see that the privilege she enjoys in serving in a high state office and her chance to be placed on a major party's presidential ticket is due in no small part to community organizers who started fighting for national women's suffrage in 1920 and a 2nd wave of organizers in the 1960's and 1970's who demanded equal rights for women.

But she owes what she has to an even larger cloud of organizers. The legacy of community organizers includes prominent women focused on various types of communities. Jane Addams started the first settlement houses that provided day care for working mothers and education for all ages of people at the bottom of the pecking order. Dorothy Day, mother of the Catholic Worker Movement, advocated for women's rights, ran hospitality houses for the dispossessed in urban slums and opposed the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

Sarah Palin's children owe the existence of the leisure time to join their mother in Minneapolis to community organizers like Mother Jones, who organized children working in mills and mines in the early 20th Century to leverage change from a Republican administration that otherwise ignored the ills of child labor. The tiny contingent of African American delegates applauding Ms. Palin attacks enjoyed the right of traveling to Minneapolis via desegregated interstate travel thanks to Rosa Parks, who learned the art of civil disobedience right here in Tennessee at the Highlander Folk School from a community organizer, Myles Horton (who also trained Martin Luther King, Jr.).

You see, so much of Sarah Palin's public life would have been erased had it not been for the thankless work of an unbroken line of community organizers (both remembered and forgotten). But she had no thanks in her snide and sophomoric denigration of community organizing. She expressed prideful and pompous disdain for her forebearers as if she earned the privileges of public service all by herself (thus confirming the perception that Republican leaders get born on third base and assume they hit triples). And her previous life as a beauty pageant contestant, TV desk reporter, and hockey mom never afforded her the opportunity to stand in the shoes of people who work night and day (including weekends) for modest pay to serve their community by organizing it.

Worst of all, she abdicated her responsibility as a public servant to retell the story of American progress as her own story. For the sake of personal gain and her own portfolio, Sarah Palin attempted to poison the perception of Americans who may know community organizing even less than she does. The story of America since the late 19th Century is the story of immigrants being "Americanized," women getting the vote and breaking through vocational glass ceilings, African Americans finally enjoying the basic civil rights to which they were entitled ages ago, Latinos fighting for the full fruits of their labors, children being freed from sweat shops to go to school and to play (and, in Bristol Palin's case, freed to have their own children), and neighborhoods leveraging a place at the table of decision makers. Community organizers are the central protagonists in that story, even if Sarah Palin doesn't really understand or acknowledge that.

At Least We Finished Ahead of Alabama, Mississippi, and West Virginia!

Annie E. Casey Foundation ranks Tennessee 42nd in protecting its children from a life of poverty.

Maybe we'll catch Kentucky the next time around.

HT: Facing South

More Crosswalk Contention

Thanks to HangingUpsideDown for reminding me that Germantown has a couple of crosswalks despite the fact that there are absolutely no schools in that neighborhood. The crosswalk in the picture is at the intersection of 5th Av. and Monroe St. That intersection was repaved after Germantown/Salemtown water main upgrade, and the crosswalk was replaced afterwards.

Despite the fact that Germantown can have its crosswalk put back after road construction without any semblance of a school around, I was told by a Metro Public Works official last Thursday that crosswalks are expensive and that they are generally put down only near schools. He was seemingly trying to talk me out of the idea of a crosswalk at the intersection of 5th and Hume St. at the Morgan Park Community Center.

Yet, no more than a block down 5th from Morgan Park is an institution that is closer to being a school than anything in Germantown: the Head Start Program of Nashville, which is the "largest provider of early childhood education in Davidson County." Head Start is even housed in the old "Fehr Public School" building. However, I was left with the distinct impression on Thursday that Salemtown crosswalks were out of the question even with children crossing busy roads.

I fear that Salemtown is being confined to the business end of a double standard.

One of the Stronger Justifications for a Metro Nashville Public Wi-Fi

Our children are at a disadvantage compared to others. Less than 50% have home internet access.

A Williamson County administrator says, "[Williamson County's 89% student internet access] shows that parents value the ability for the children to have information at their fingertips." Or it may show that Williamson County parents have more disposable income per capita than Davidson County parents, who value the ability for their children to have the same information no less than Williamson County parents.