November 27, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Opinion

Happy Thanksgiving

Guest opinion:
The Ford Fund: a Depression tale

My first encounter with economic disaster came fairly early in my life. I was about nine years old in 1929. Until that time, life had flowed smoothly. My family did not make a lot of money, but we had enough to live on. We did not have extravagant tastes. My father had a job, my mother did not work outside the house and we lived within our means. Most people we knew were not rich but lived comfortable lives. 

When the little three ye\ar old girl next door sang the nursery rhyme, “Daddy is a banker and as rich as he can be,” she would always add, ”My daddy is a banker but he’s not as rich as he can be!” Her father worked at the Metropolitan Bank, the only Black  (in those days we said “Negro” or “Colored”) bank, a large gray building at the main intersection of the nearby business section.

A lot of people we knew owned cars. Dr. Moone, our family doctor who brought me into the world, was generous about taking us for rides. Our next-door neighbor, the banker, would give us a lift sometimes.

But I wanted to have a car of our own. Not being one to sit by and wish idly, I announced that I was going to save my money to buy us a car. My mother did not discourage me, and I dutifully saved every penny, every nickel and every dime that came into my possession. I had a metal dime bank, a glass penny bank and a bank shaped like a world globe for my nickels. I would hopefully pass the money to my mother weekly to be put in the bank when my father went there.

I called it my Ford Fund. Yes, we would soon have a car of our own.

Then the catastrophe came. I know it did not happen as suddenly as it seemed to me. The people who were reading newspapers or listening to radio news knew about it, even if they didn’t know what to do about it. But without any official warning, the Metropolitan Bank closed down. I was horrified when I heard my mother saying that people had gone to my bank to find the doors closed and locked and saw huge signs saying “Closed Until Further Notice.” How would I ever get the car now? I heard there were people outside the bank, protesting, angry, some uncontrollably sobbing and demanding recourse. I wanted to go, too, but my mother did not think my appearance would help any.

I was inconsolable. My life savings were gone. And where had my money gone? All of my $20!

My mother tried to comfort me, but what she said to make me feel better missed the point. She said, “You don’t have to worry. You didn’t have any money left in the bank anyway. Your daddy paid the light bill with that money.”

Jessie Birtha

Mrs. Birtha, a member of the Lovett Writers, spent her childhood in Norfolk, Virginia.

Reflections on a historic election
by George Stern

Two weeks have passed since what may well be the most historic election since the very first one — because it puts in power a person who would not have been eligible to be President (or hold any other federal office, for that matter) when Washington was elected. I still sometimes wake up thinking, “Did it really happen?”

In the weeks preceding the election, my wife and I housed several out-of-towners who, like tens of thousands of others, left the comforts of home to work in this and other “toss-up” states. Three weekends in a row we hosted a Bostonian whose father had been a union organizer and who himself held two doctorates. Among the many students he taught over the years were the current foreign secretary of Great Britain and William Ayers, the rebellious scion of a very wealthy Republican family and, from what the McCain-Palin campaign implied, still a major threat to American security.

Just before the election, we hosted a 70-plus-year-old couple from Brooklyn, immigrant Muslims from Egypt, who beat the sidewalks in Nicetown to get out the vote. With them were two 20-somethings, also from Brooklyn, one of whom grew up in Wyoming. His move to New York cut the Obama vote in Wyoming nearly in half!

November 4: After waiting impatiently for over an hour in a line that wound down the ramp, out to the street, and half way down the block outside Summit Church, I finally got to choose my candidates and push that big green button. I spent the rest of the day at Lovett Library, serving as a line captain. Ironically, so many people voted early, there were in fact no lines to “captain.” So I had plenty of time to talk, and just watch.

More so than I could remember at election time, real excitement was in the air. Many Americans saw this election not just as the usual contest between parties or politicians, but rather as a contest between past and future. Even more decisively than in John Kennedy’s victory in 1960, America voted to move forward, rejecting once and for all the legacy of slavery. No observer could think otherwise.

I think of the African American woman who came out of the polling place crying and the elderly white woman who was sent twice to the wrong polling place but who was determined to vote, both of them thrilled to have participated in something, well, “unbelievable.” Then there was the online newspaper report another volunteer showed me about her 91-year-old aunt in North Carolina who registered and voted for the first time because “at last there was someone worth voting for.” I wonder how many Americans realize the depth of despair out of which she and millions of others bravely ventured forth earlier this month.

It is especially significant that the whoopin’ and hollerin’ that took place all over the country was not at all limited to African-American neighborhoods. News reports tended to emphasize that Obama got less than half of the white vote. What they often failed to say, however, is that he got a higher percentage of white votes than any candidate since 1972 (he tied with Clinton’s record in 1996). So much for the “Bradley Effect.” Racism undoubtedly is still alive, but happily it’s not all that well. 

Watching the results first at several parties and then at home, I was especially moved by the picture of the Rev. Jesse Jackson crying. What must have been going through the mind of a man who had been at the forefront of the civil rights struggle for decades? Earlier in the campaign he’d shown some ambiguity; in a way, Obama’s success would put him, or at least his approach, out of business. Indeed, his own son broke with him on this very point. He might well have worried that so high profile a success as election to the presidency, based on a universal rather than a focused (in this case racial) appeal, would leave fulfillment of the dream for many incomplete.

Martin Luther King himself probably wouldn’t have thought that a black man would be elected president just forty years after telling us he’d “climbed to the mountaintop,” though he probably would have taken great pleasure in the universal approach Obama adopted. After all, King was fighting for the welfare of poor Americans of every color when he was so tragically tossed from the summit. What a crowning success it would have been for him to see a black man standing there at the top of the mountain, surrounded by supporters of every color, ethnicity, race, religion, and gender!

Now, I find Jackson’s ambiguity quite understandable. Like African-Americans who lived before and during the 1950s and ‘60s, Jews who witnessed the Holocaust have had very skeptical reactions to post-World War II successes — the end of restricted real estate covenants that once kept Jews out of certain neighborhoods (including Northwest Philadelphia); entrance of Jews into top positions in most (though not all) professions and industries; the election of Jews to political office, including disproportionate numbers to Congress (often from states with very few Jews); the appointment of Jews to the presidency of universities once said to be anti-Semitic; and more. Yet many Jews, especially those whose experience included significant prejudice, react to these successes with a combination of disbelief (“Just wait. You’ll see …”) and fear (“What if he doesn’t do well?”). It’s not easy to change the way you think about the world after centuries of oppression. And impatience for justice, always a virtue, can sometimes make it hard to celebrate steps forward, even huge ones.

There’s a cynical joke making the rounds: “Why are you surprised Americans elected an African American president? They always give the worst jobs to blacks.” Given the challenges facing the new president, there is indeed a danger that he will be judged by a messianic yardstick no person could measure up to. After all, the whole world seems to be holding its breath, anxiously awaiting an America that leads collaboratively and by example. 

I am convinced that, more than ever before in my lifetime, America will soon have at its helm a true leader, a man guided by moral and religious principles, exceedingly intelligent and experienced (yes, experienced in what real life is like for Americans of all backgrounds and economic levels). His ability to inspire is evident, which means he will be able to present even bad news in a way that will energize individuals and drive creative problem-solving.

John F. Kennedy exhorted us to ask what we could do for our country. In the 21st century, we realize that what we do affects the whole world. It’s over the top to think that our president will be the messiah. But we can certainly hope that he will be a barack – a blessing (Hebrew berachah) – for us all.

Rabbi George Stern is executive director of Neighborhood Interfaith Movement (NIM), a coalition of 60 Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian congregations and faith institutions dedicated to building a vibrant, just, and caring community through learning, service, and advocacy.

Biting the hand that fed them...
by Jim Foster

After two years on the CHCA board, and having served as chairman of its Financial Oversight Committee, I have seen my share of arrogant power grabs, vote manipulation and regular violations of the bylaws, but none surpassed the Kafkaesque experience of Thursday Nov. 20.

Part of it was “déjà vu all over again” as I watched some of the same executive players, now working with a cadre of new naive acolytes — many of whom obviously took orders and rehearsed their lines — produce the preordained votes arranged through the “phone mafia.” It cast participatory democracy into the same ditch where it rested for quite a few years before the reform board of 2006.

Thursday night’s intended power grab was a kangaroo court, where a small committee used supposed findings of substandard performance of the Chestnut Hill Local staff to justify a set of new policies in a manner that would make the Politburo proud. 

A 10-point recommendation that drastically changed employee responsibility and salaries was apparently approved by a small executive committee and, without any board discussion, presented to the staff as a no-option, new employee policy, and then offered Thursday for what amounted to automatic imprimatur.

Presumably the board’s shadow power base thought it had the votes counted and could control discussion and debate in its usual manner — that would be of selective recognition and gaveling down opposition. They almost pulled it off, but almost only counts in horseshoes.

For many years the profit-making Chestnut Hill Local newspaper supported the money-losing Chestnut Hill Community Association on an ongoing basis. At first this profit was clearly presented in annual statements with a line item transferring it to offset losses in the separate CHCA financial statement.

After some time, the accounting was changed to merge the two entitles and mask the profit of the Local with offsetting expenses from the CHCA. But the trail is easy to find.

When the losses and misrepresentations of the CHCA management became too large for even the Local to support, they then raided the Community Fund without authorization, simply by writing checks signed by the same individuals who wrote all checks for all three entities.

When the reform board of 2006 exposed these actions, the new trustees simply forgave the majority debt the CHCA owed to the fund, but then charged some of it to the Local. Small change? Not on your life! They “wrote off $180,000 of CHCA debt but saddled the Local with a $33,000 loan.

The new board should get its facts straight. The Local kept them alive for many years, keeping little or no profit as retained earnings for maintenance or improvements. When the State of Pennsylvania earmarked a state grant only for upgrades in the production department of the Local, the CHCA board illegally transferred all of those funds to uses not approved by the state, much of it in another building, and then altered documents with White-Out and address changes as reports to the state. Not only did they squeeze every last drop of profit out of the Local during the profitable years, they confiscated its state funding as well! 

Board members and fund trustees need to do the right thing. The only reason the CHCA still exists is thanks to the Local, and if it were to stop printing, the CHCA is history. Folks want to read this award-winning independent community newspaper with an open editorial policy because it is like no other — not because it is an arm of the CHCA.

It is put together by young professionals in a manner that puts similar chain-owned fish-wrappers to shame. I am often at odds with opinions I read in the Local, and — here is the best part — I am allowed to say so!  That is hard call today, even in the New York Times.

The fund is not an endowment but a trust fund that is supposed to spend some principal in order to maintain the quality of life in Chestnut Hill and the surrounding areas. The Local is clearly a part of that quality of life. When you needed it, the Local’s money was there; now it may need you to open your eyes. Forgive the debt to the fund, just as you did the massive debt the CHCA owed.

Pay off the equipment debt that is held in the name of the Local, for it is the least you can do since you took its equipment money in 2005 for your own purposes. Then, after reducing its monthly debt obligations, do some serious and fair analysis with the Local employees, comparing its situation and operation with newspapers of comparable size, market and design (there are not too many).

I am sure there are ways to adapt to the reality of today’s news and advertising marketplace. My experience with the Local employees is that they are reasonable people who want to produce a quality product. Treating this issue undemocratically from a position of all-knowing dominance is exactly the wrong thing to do, especially with your track record.

Finally, and probably most importantly, the readers, the community members and the rank and file members of the CHCA, need to have a voice in this matter. The worst aspect of the board meeting last Thursday was its failure to be inclusive, despite that these are open public meetings, designed 50 years ago by a community organization founded on grass roots participation.

For the most part, board members, and in some cases only certain board members, were recognized multiple times, while non-board members, including representatives of the Local itself were either not recognized or given little time to make their points, cut off and then left hanging, while the same message of new top-down controls resulting from the studies of two or three individuals on a committee were announced as “the only possible course of action” and one that should be immediately rubber-stamped by the board without any serious debate or input from the management team of the Local itself.

All concerned readers and community members should attend the executive committee meeting on Dec. 11, where the Local staff will be given a “reprieve” to make their case. This “liberal” board granted a stay of execution of one month, giving the newspaper until that meeting to submit alternatives. 

The full board is then planning to vote on the new employment policies at the Dec.18 meeting. I am hoping to see and hear the voices of “the little people” drown out the dictates of the self-important. In the meantime, call any board member or trustee on the published lists and acquaint them with the will of the people they serve.

Jim Foster is a Mt. Airy businessman and a former board member of the Chestnut Hill Community Association.