Riverside Files Lessons Learned, Relearned and Unlearned

My mother had a saying for every occasion, often two or three. When she got bored with sayings, quotations, proverbs, she sang her messages to her children.

One of her favorite songs with a message (and ours too) was Little Man You’re Crying, which included the words “You've been playing soldier, the battle has been won, the war is over for today. Come now, little soldier, put away your gun, the war is over for tonight.”

What does that have to do with the battle to save Riverside Park, you may be wondering.

While it’s true that , the war that has been at the bottom of every attempt to sell Riverside is far from over.

IN THE BEGINNING

It’s been over a year now since a Purchase Agreement to sell approximately half of Riverside Park was signed by four city councilors, none of whom lived, or even worked, in the north end of New London.

Friends of Riverside was not too far into the campaign to save Riverside Park before it became apparent that saving the park was serving to highlight other problems that had existed in New London for a very long time but, for a number of reasons, had seldom been addressed.

The most glaring of these were the divisions that separated our community - physically, ethnically and economically; issues that had a impact on the quality of life for many of the most vulnerable in our city.

Many residents, in particular those who are not victims of prejudice in its many forms, chose to ignore it or to even admit that it ever existed although the problem of marginalization, disenfranchisement and bias was not news for many residents and was addressed in a recent article  by Ann Baldelli of The Day. 

Lending even more credibility to the charge of inequity, not just in the NLFD, is the following information that appeared in another Day article “In 2004 the city of New London eliminated its position of affirmative action officer and transferred some of that employee's duties to the personnel coordinator.”

In the City of New London’s Listing of Boards and Agencies, there is only one that is listed as inactive, the Affirmative Action Advisory Committee, judged obsolete by those who determine those things.

FROM THE BEGINNING

From the beginning, I believed that Social Justice issues played a significant part in the Coast Guard Academy’s offer to purchase and the council’s majority vote to sell Riverside Park, many of the discussions and actions that followed and the Election Day vote itself.

While there are many middle and upper class families who live in East New London, the highest concentration of poverty also exists in East New London and it was people from the poorest among us who most frequently used Riverside Park for a number of reasons including financial, availability and transportation.

Yet, regarding the sale of Riverside, we had four councilors, three of whom lived in the Sixth District, who voted to sell one of the only recreational assets available to the residents who lived north of the bridge in this densely populated area of New London and, making matters even more suspect, the strongest support for the sale of Riverside Park came from  residents of the Third District.

You may wonder “What’s wrong with that?”

Here’s what wrong with it.

Nearly every place I saw that had either of the VOTE YES SHARE RIVERSIDE PARK signs also had one or a combination of the following:

Their own home

A large well maintained lawn

A fenced-in yard

A view of the Thames River

A private beach or access to one of the private beaches along Pequot Avenue

Easy access to Ocean Beach and places like Toby May, Mitchell Woods, Tennis Courts, Baseball Fields and the Thames Yacht Club

Many of those residents, while enjoying all those benefits, and more, saw nothing wrong with thinking that it would be perfectly all right for them to vote to sell what little East New London families had and give it to the Coast Guard Academy whose students already had more than children in the neighborhoods surrounding Riverside could dream of having.

Or maybe they weren’t thinking at all.

I don’t believe they have even the vaguest idea of what live is like for many of the families and children who live in poverty in East New London.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard or read statements like “Well, let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps” but I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who paid for those signs and those who allowed them to be placed on their lawns didn’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

And I’ll bet they have no idea what it is like for some of the parents who live over in East New London who wake up every morning and take a bus to a job that doesn’t even pay enough to keep their families off of Food Stamps.

I’ll also bet that most of the people with VOTE YES signs on their lawns don’t have a problem coming up with enough money to take their children to Ocean Beach, buy all their kids jackets at the same time or put enough gas in the car to take them to the free beach-Green Harbor-that’s if they even have a car.

And I’ll bet a good number of people with VOTE YES signs on their lawns don’t have to send their children to our failing New London schools but the people who live in State Pier and Crystal Avenue do.

But those things are grinding, demoralizing and daily realities for far too many parents and their children in East New London and, if we are to succeed as a community, those realities must be recognized and changed.

In his Vision for New London, Mayor Finizio, supporting his belief in a renaissance for New London, writes “By celebrating and embracing our City’s diversity, we will empower our people and build a stronger community.”

Let’s get started.