[Modified from an essay from Robert Reich. See below for his original writing and its source.]
Many Arcatans today worry that our city is losing its identity. Yet the core of that identity is not based on who among us owns a home and which of us may never own a home, or our background or our ethnicity.
It is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common.
That common good is a set of shared commitments. To democracy. To tolerance of our differences. To equal political rights and equal opportunity. To participating in our civic life. To sacrificing for the ideals we hold in common. To upholding the truth.
We cannot have a functioning society without these shared commitments. Without a shared sense of common good, there can be no “we” to begin with.
If we are losing our city’s identity, it is because we are losing our sense of the common good. This is what must be restored.
Recovering our common good depends on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship. Leaders must be judged not by whether they score a “win” for their side, but whether they strengthen democratic institutions and increase public trust.
It depends on honoring those who have invested in the common good, and holding accountable those who have exploited it for their own selfish ends.
It requires that we understand — and educate our children about — what we owe one another as members of the same society. Instead of focusing solely on the rights of citizenship, we need also to focus on the duties of citizenship.
And it requires a renewed commitment to truth.
The challenge is to turn this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land — a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the institutions of Arcata.
The moral fiber of our society has been weakened but it has not been destroyed.
We can preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in politics. In Arcata, this means speaking when we we see something that needs to be spoken to. And for our leaders, it means listening — and acting on what they hear.
We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another by reaching out to one another. We can help resurrect civility by acting more civilly toward those with whom we disagree. We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies.
We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort.
Our finest moments have been when we sought to live up to our shared ideals.
Fifty years ago in Arcata, or even twenty years ago, the common good was better understood. Resurrecting it may take another ten or twenty years, or more.
[This is the end of the modification of Reich’s essay. What is below is strictly for Arcata.]
What we do now, with Arcata’s Gateway Area Plan and our updated General Plan, will affect the Arcata community in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, 50 years. Dense development must be done properly.
If we were to allow a new through-road on L Street, then what future Arcatans would know would be traffic. But we’re not doing that. A full-width linear park there will have future Arcatans thank us for our understanding of the benefits of an urban park.
What is entirely reprehensible, from my view, is that a guiding director of Arcata feels the need to misrepresent the truth in order to score a “win” and get his way. (For just one example — and there are dozens — please read or just skim this article.)
Allowing developers to build a six-story building to the very edges of their properties or put five-story buildings right next to single family homes is not what I consider to be in the common good. In the images and videos, on the public walks and discussions, in the rhetoric at the meetings — we were always told that the designs for multi-story apartments would respect the adjoining neighborhood homes. And that respect has disappeared.
Claiming that engagement and inclusion from Arcata’s minority community is what’s wanted, and then, after surveying exactly thirteen BIPOC people, acting as though this engagement has been achieved — that’s an example of leadership not acting for the common good.
Ignoring our existing General Plan — “We’ll grow, but on our own terms” — is an example of not acting for the public good. Not having citizens draft a version of Arcata’s Vision Statement for our new General Plan (that’s how it’s been done before) is an example of ignoring the public good. “We’ll grow, but on our own terms” has been removed from the draft of the updated General Plan.
Many Arcatans today worry that our city is losing its identity. More than ever now, we need the leadership of our City Council to help preserve what makes Arcata a wonderful place to live.
- Many Arcatans today worry that our city is losing its identity
- The back-story of this essay
- Who is Robert Reich
- Robert Reich’s newsletter: Referring to “The Common Good”
The back-story of this essay
I started developing Arcata1.com in February, 2022. It was clear to me that the City’s Community Development Department was not supplying adequate information needed for good decision-making. The original concentration was on maps and aerial views and on explanations of factors that affected planning decisions. Also, I was bothered by the official City one-hour video on the Gateway Area Plan, made by Rob Holmlund, then of Planwest, the planning firm that devised the Gateway Area Plan. I found the video to be misleading and in some ways untruthful in important areas. (The video, transcription and critique can be seen here and here on Arcata1.com.)
What I did not know back then is the degree of misrepresentative, mischaracterizations, falsehoods, and “We’ll do what it takes to win” behavior that would be a part of this supposedly community-oriented process.
Surveys have been manipulated, votes not tallied correctly, community input information not presented accurately, staff reports issued with misleadingly worded statements, planning and economic concepts addressed in a duplicitous manner — and on.
In the staff report for the October 24, 2023, City Council – Planning Commission joint study session, the Community Developer Director writes about the “broad engagement to increase access to the marginalized community members” and the “thousands of people we’ve engaged in this work.”
City Councilmembers: Do you want to read about the input from the marginalized community members and the “focus group outreach”? Skim through Arcata’s Racial Equity outreach for the General Plan update is a sham. It will take just a few minutes. This outreach that is referred to involved exactly 13 people of color.
The Community Development Director should be ashamed of himself for even suggesting that there was “broad engagement” to marginalized members of our community. And it would be shameful if the City Councilmembers accepted this.
The “thousands of people we’ve engaged in this work”? Thousands as plural — meaning, what, two thousand? Three thousand? In whose imagination do those people live? Where are these “thousands”?
I’m not a person who prior to this Gateway process was commonly angry. But the actions that I’ve seen and experienced over this past year and a half have brought great anger to me. I simply do not like it when I see attempts to deceive our City officials and the public.
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Robert Reich
Robert Reich is a professor, author, and political commentator. He was Secretary of Labor in the cabinet of President Bill Clinton and served a member of President Obama’s economic advisory board. He has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 2006. In 2008, Time magazine named him as one of the ten best cabinet members of the century.
Reich was born in 1946, and is now 77 years old. He was born with a genetic bone disorder that resulted him being small when growing up and just 4 feet 11 inches as an adult. His small stature as a child had him be a target for bullying, and he sought protection from older boys.
One of these older boys was Michael Schwerner. In 1964, a few days before Reich’s 18th birthday, Michael Schwerner killed, as one of the three civil rights workers who were murdered in Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Schwerner was in Mississippi to help with registering Black voters.
Robert Reich has stated that the murder of his friend was an eternal inspiration to “fight the bullies, to protect the powerless, to makes sure that the people without a voice have a voice.”
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Robert Reich’s newsletter: Referring to “The Common Good”
Reich writes a daily newsletter — “exposing where power lies — and how it’s used and abused.” (Click here to subscribe.) His recent entry, from October 20, 2023, contains a summary and a challenge of what we face in restoring America’s goodness.
His newsletter entry struck a nerve for me. Under the guideline of “Think Globally, Act Locally,” I took what he wrote and changed some words. Where Reich wrote “America,” I entered the name of our city, “Arcata.” I removed many paragraphs, omitted some phrases that would not be pertinent for us here in Arcata, and introduced some words here and there so that it’s more meaningful to our local situation. You can read his original essay here, below.
Robert Reich: A final word about the common good
A summary and a challenge
From his newsletter, October 20, 2023
Friends,
It’s been a ghastly two weeks. War, violence, and the deaths of innocent people — whether in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, or on the streets of America — can cause even the most optimistic among us to doubt the capacities of human beings to live together peacefully on this earth.
Which is why it’s so important to seek the common good.
Last night, President Biden reminded us of that common good:
“In moments like these, when fear and suspicion, anger and rage run hard … we have to work harder than ever to hold on to the values that make us who we are. We’re a nation of religious freedom, freedom of expression. We all have a right to debate and disagree, without fear of being targeted in schools or workplaces or in our communities…. We reject all forms, all forms of hate, whether against Muslims, Jews, or anyone.”
In urging additional aid for Israel and Ukraine, the President also reminded us how important our common good is to the rest of the world:
“American leadership is what holds the world together. America is a beacon to the world, still, still. … Tonight, there are innocent people all over the world who hope because of us. Who believe in a better life because of us. Who are desperate not to be forgotten by us. And who are waiting for us.”
Which brings me to the central point of this series of Friday essays on the common good.
Many Americans today worry that our nation is losing its national identity. Yet the core of that identity is not the whiteness of our skin or our religion or our ethnicity.
It is the ideals we share, the good we hold in common.
That common good is a set of shared commitments. To the rule of law. To democracy. To tolerance of our differences. To equal political rights and equal opportunity. To participating in our civic life. To sacrificing for the ideals we hold in common. To upholding the truth.
We cannot have a functioning society without these shared commitments. Without a shared sense of common good, there can be no “we” to begin with.
If we are losing our national identity, it is because we are losing our sense of the common good. This is what must be restored.
As I’ve argued in these essays, recovering our common good depends on several things:
It depends on establishing a new ethic of leadership based on trusteeship. Leaders must be judged not by whether they score a “win” for their side, but whether they strengthen democratic institutions and increase public trust.
It depends on honoring those who have invested in the common good, and holding accountable those who have exploited it for their own selfish ends.
It requires that we understand — and educate our children about — what we owe one another as members of the same society. Instead of focusing solely on the rights of citizenship, we need also to focus on the duties of citizenship.
And it requires a renewed commitment to truth.
Some of you may feel such a quest to be hopeless. The era we are living in offers too many illustrations of greed, narcissism, brutality, and hatefulness.
I, however, firmly believe this quest is not hopeless.
Almost every day, I witness or hear of the compassion and generosity of ordinary Americans. Their actions rarely make headlines, but they constitute much of our daily life together.
The challenge is to turn all this into a new public spiritedness extending to the highest reaches in the land — a public morality that strengthens our democracy, makes our economy work for everyone, and revives trust in the major institutions of the nation.
The moral fiber of our society has been weakened but it has not been destroyed.
We can recover the rule of law and preserve our democratic institutions by taking a more active role in politics.
We can fight against all forms of bigotry. We can strengthen the bonds that connect us to one another by reaching out to one another. We can help resurrect civility by acting more civilly toward those with whom we disagree.
We can protect the truth by using facts and logic to combat lies.
We can help restore the common good by striving for it and showing others it’s worth the effort.
We have never been a perfect union. Our finest moments have been when we sought to live up to our shared ideals.
I worked for Robert F. Kennedy a half-century ago when the common good was better understood. Resurrecting it may take another half-century, or more.
But as the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once said, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history.”