Responding to Sweeney: A community is more complex than ‘us vs. them’

Kane Sweeney begins his recent opinion piece by telling us about hardship. Homelessness, difficult housing situations, displacement, and the experience of trying to build a life in Waterbury. I am genuinely sorry that he went through those things. Personal experience shapes all of us, and I have no doubt those experiences helped shape his beliefs about housing, labor, and local government.

But Kane is not the only person in Waterbury who has suffered.

None of us knows the full story carried by the person sitting beside us at a Select Board meeting, living across the street, running a small business, renting an apartment, owning a home, raising a family or asking difficult questions about a proposed development.

Some people have lost homes. Some have survived floods. Some have buried people they loved. Some have struggled financially. Some have cared for sick family members, rebuilt lives after enormous loss, watched businesses fail, worked multiple jobs, gone without, started over, or carried burdens their neighbors know absolutely nothing about.

Most of us do not begin a public-policy argument by presenting our résumé of suffering. And we should not have to.

Our experiences can inform our convictions. They do not give any one of us greater ownership of hardship, of working people, or of the public interest.

That is why I find the “us-versus-them” framing in Kane's piece troubling.

People who disagree with him are described as entrenched, powerful and part of Waterbury's “wannabe ruling class.” Bosses and landlords become a broadly defined opposition. Working people are urged to organize against those standing in the way.

But a community is more complicated than that.

Owning a home does not mean someone has never struggled.

Owning a business does not automatically make someone indifferent to working people.

Renting does not determine someone's politics.

And questioning whether a particular development is appropriate for a particular piece of land does not make someone opposed to housing.

I strongly support the need for more housing in Waterbury. I also believe that where we build, how much we build, whether a site is environmentally appropriate, whether it is safe from flooding, whether infrastructure can support it, and whether neighboring properties are protected all matter.

Those things can be true at the same time.

Kane specifically writes that while serving on the Select Board he lobbied his fellow board members to enter into a purchase agreement with the state “so that a large developer could build much-needed housing.”

That statement deserves attention.

Stanley-Wasson is not simply an abstract housing policy. It is a particular parcel, with particular physical conditions, surrounded by an existing neighborhood. Whether a proposed development there ultimately satisfies Waterbury's standards should be determined through environmental review, engineering, public process, and the independent application of our land-use rules, not by whether any former or current elected official entered the process already convinced that housing must be the final outcome.

Kane also describes that effort among his political “failures.”

I don't see it that way.

A project being questioned is not failure.

Environmental review is not failure.

Residents asking their government for answers is not failure.

A developer being required to demonstrate that a proposal complies with the rules is not failure.

And if a project ultimately needs to become smaller, change substantially, or prove unsuitable for a particular site, that is not necessarily failure either.

That is what responsible local government is supposed to determine.

I respect Kane's right to organize. I respect the right of workers to unionize, renters to organize, residents to petition their government, and voters to support candidates who represent their views.

Those same democratic principles protect the people who disagree.

Disagreement is not oppression. Scrutiny is not obstruction. And residents who ask their government to follow its own rules are not an enemy class.

Waterbury's challenges are real. Housing affordability is real. So are flooding and environmental risks, infrastructure limitations, taxes, wages, and the pressures faced by people across this community. We will not solve any of them by deciding that one group of neighbors represents working people while another represents everything standing in their way.

We all carry the stories people around us cannot see.

Perhaps we should begin there.

Carrie MacMillan lives in Waterbury.

Responding to Sweeney: A community is more complex than ‘us vs. them’

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