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I am a member of an email list-serve that includes elected officials, community organizers, activists, university professors and department chairs and the like. Generally, I choose not to get involved in the email chains. Believe in Syracuse keeps me busy and many of the discussions do not directly pertain to Believe in Syracuse.
But something happened to me today. I was reading an email exchange where one member was criticizing the other. Name calling was going on and I was astounded by it. It made me remember some things about our community and I decided to respond to the bickering. For privacy reasons, the names of the people involved in the debate have been changed, but here is my email response to the argument:
We should, will, and are having a debate about these issues... Destiny.... Economic Development.... etc. That is a good thing. Personally I am not an expert in these issues and do not get overly involved in the details of the arguments.
Mr. George's failure is the failure that is systemic in our community. A failure of tone. Poisoned civic dialogue. This poisoned civic dialogue was created by deception and distrust of leaders, but what ads gasoline to that fire is the negativity. Ms. Harris is "One of destiny's children".... some call Mr. George is a curmudgeon and ivory tower elitist. Some might call me a 20 something kid who is too idealistic. Destiny is evil. Our government is corrupt. Taxes are too high.......
These are the excuses we give ourselves. These are our scapegoats. This is why we can't get things done. This is why our mayor and our city council dislike each other, but more important is what this negative tone and cynicism does to the people of out community.
A smaller percentage of our citizens volunteer and donate to charity than is the national average. Our young people and almost any middle class bright people who can... move away. Why? Because our perception of Syracuse is so negative.
Sometimes I wonder if lake effect snow is powered by negativity and cynicism... or if its the other way around.
I would ask all of you to think very seriously about how you talk about our community. How you think about our community. Take a step back from all the debating and arguing and think: does name calling accomplish anything? Does cynicism accomplish anything?
If your answer is no, think about the idea we've pushed with Believe in Syracuse. Visit our website www.believeinsyracuse.org and then tell me, can we change the conversation about Syracuse? We're already doing that. With your help we can do it faster.