Last
Wednesday I was working on my first column of the New Year, full of the kind of
hope and optimism that comes from being rested, when I got a call from
Lindsay’s mayor, Ramona Padilla. “Have
you seen the paper?” she asked. Her
voice urgent, she read the headline of the story of the year. “City searches for lost leadership,” she
said, noting a photo of former city manager/police chief Rich Wilkinson sat right
below it.
To have the year’s news of Lindsay
characterized in this way, after 12 months of struggle to make progress in
teaching the albatross to fly – the albatross around Lindsay’s neck left by
years of leadership still lost in Townsend’s pink cloud – was almost
devastating to me, if not to her. If you
want to know what the insiders are thinking (and feeling,) just read one of
Sheyenne Romero’s articles. Her
carefully reconstructed versions of Lindsay’s history match theirs to a T.
I could spend my 500 words
deconstructing that version, or I can tell you in a couple of sentences why
that “loss” is really good news.
Wilkinson was a bully, a different kind of bully than Townsend was –
less savvy, more abrasive – but a bully nonetheless. The keepers of the citadel put him there like
a gun to replace a diplomat. It cost us
a lot, both financially and socially, to have him there and it cost us a lot to
let him move on, but his departure was an improvement in community
quality. It brought hope for the future.
The “conflict” between the city council and staff that Ms. Romero reports with such dismay was actually a long-overdue and hard-won change: the council actually began doing their job overseeing the staff on behalf of the public. I see it as a tremendously healthy sign of democracy returning to this small town. “Returning” might be a hopelessly romantic word to use, since small towns are known for their propensity to serve only the handful of small fish whose self-esteem is magnified by the size of the pond. But this romantic believes that at some tiny moment in Lindsay’s history, democracy did have a day. And more important, this advocate for the four freedoms believes we can have it again.
It will take people working together
to figure out how we make the democratic process accessible to people who’ve
never seen it in action (English speakers included.) It will take people who want that, which
means replacing some of this city’s “leadership” that still remains with people
who can see the beauty of inclusiveness.
It will take people who give more than lip service to the need for governmental
transparency. And it will take hope.
I take hope from Lindsay’s real
story of 2015. It was the story of the year, largely unreported by this or any
other paper. And I believe we can move
forward to a more democratic society, with a more transparent and responsible
government and an engaged citizenry becoming members of this place for the
first time in their lives. It is not too
much to hope for. Happy 2016.
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Trudy
Wischemann is a rural advocate who writes.
You can send her your signs of forward movement c/o P.O. Box 1374,
Lindsay CA 93247 or leave a
comment below.
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