THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 10, 1996 TAG: 9603120425
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE KNEPLER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 208 lines
E.G. ``Tip'' Corprew laments the long-gone heyday of ``The Block'' on Effingham Street, a row of shops and eateries between High and King streets that served as a central gathering place for many Portsmouth residents.
``That's the place where you'd talk about anything, anything and everything that was going on, the talk of the day,'' said Corprew, now 53. ``There were barbershops, taverns, shoe-shine parlors, a couple of hot-dog stands, pool parlors, too, and a theater.''
Across America, places like ``The Block'' are becoming an endangered species. Traditional streetscapes have decayed or given way to new development and the spread of discount superstores.
In Suffolk last month, long-time customers mourned the closing of the lunch counter at the Nansemond Drug Co. on downtown Main Street. The Rite Aid pharmacy chain, taking over the 91-year-old store, needed more retail space.
We don't have time to talk with each other like we once did.
We have fewer traditional places to informally meet and test ideas on each other, to mix opinions with banter and tell our stories.
We're losing the ingredients for what politics once was about, people learning to reason together to solve common problems.
Today, our politics - particularly at the national level - feature partisan bickering, extreme rhetoric from special-interest groups, and carefully crafted soundbites from poll-driven politicians.
Are there connections between the rancor of our national debates and what we've allowed our communities to become? Can grass-roots Americans do anything about it?
Perhaps the answers are in our traditions.
Nowadays, candidates for elective office, one after another, attribute an array of social problems to the erosion of traditional American values, such as family formation.
Rarely mentioned is another traditional value in decline: the tradition of having a convenient place to talk with each other.
Massive urban renewal projects, discount chain stores that drive out home-grown companies, and zoning restrictions that separate even small businesses from residential neighborhoods all figure in the reduction of traditional places where Americans hung out together.
``We've given people protection from community instead of giving them community,'' University of West Florida sociologist Ray Oldenburg said in an interview. ``The real crisis is in places to talk. We just don't have the local forums anymore.''
Taverns, coffee houses, lunch counters and other informal public squares once provided ``a source of news along with the opportunity to question, protest, sound out, supplement, and form opinion locally and collectively. And these active and individual forms of participation are essential to a government of the people,'' Oldenburg states in his 1989 book, ``The Great Good Place.''
How important? The American Revolution largely was hatched in colonial taverns, Oldenburg says; delegates to the Constitutional convention of 1787 often carried their deliberations into the pubs of Philadelphia.
``I think the big thing that we've lost has been in the changing nature of public life. Before World War II, the earliest experiences with public life for most people were with people in their own neighborhoods. Now, to be in public life means to be amid strangers,'' Oldenburg said.
There are counter trends.
There's a school of city planning and architecture known as ``neo- traditionalism'' or ``new urbanism,'' which promotes a return to mixed residential and commercial development. Front porches also seem to be making a comeback.
There's an analogous civic movement. It seeks to restore the values of conversation and civility to our political landscape.
It's not about about radio and television talk shows where the hosts often seek to build audiences through inflammatory entertainment. It's also not about the role of government-sponsored public hearings. Those venues easily become arenas for venting or having frustrating exchanges with officials.
The civic approach, however, is based on the human desires to reach out to other people, make sense of the world around us and contribute to one's community.
``There needs to be room for people to sort out what's happening around them as opposed to pushing people to take a stand or take some action,'' said Richard C. Harwood, a public-issues researcher based in Bethesda, Md.
``We also need places where people can come together and talk about their responsibilities, where the meetings are not led by public officials or officials of other institutions,'' Harwood said.
They can be traditional gathering points, such as town greens, lunch counters, community centers, church social halls and civic leagues. Or they can be formal discussion forums sponsored by non-partisan community groups.
Each has a role, as well as its advantages and disadvantages.
For example, there's a daily consistency among people who frequent informal places. Their free-wheeling discussions range over a wide array of topics, providing a natural association between issues.
``You didn't go to a tavern or to a drugstore soda fountain to be a responsible citizen. You did it to have fun. But while there, you discovered what you had in common with other people, and you found strength in numbers. Out of that came grass-roots democracy,'' Oldenburg said.
One problem is that many old-style gathering places tended to be ethnically or economically segregated, often just because of their locations or people's habits.
Organizers of discussion groups, though, emphasize diversity, contending that America's problems cannot be solved unless there are buy-ins from a broad mix of citizens.
Also, discussion groups are more focused, especially on the trade-offs that citizens must consider in almost any public-policy issues.
Harwood says both types of talking are needed.
``Communities need an abundance of places where people can come together informally. We need conversations that permeate our everyday lives,'' he said. ``The forums can't substitute, but they can help get things going.
``It's not enough just to talk. We've got to talk in a way that prompts us to think real hard and face up to choices.''
The return-to-civics movement features a wide variety of grass-roots experiments in community dialogue and deliberation. Many participate in loosely connected nationwide networks, such as the National Issues Forums, promoted by the Kettering Foundation of Dayton, Ohio, and Study Circles Resource Center in Pomfret, Conn.
Many who have participated in civic discussion groups describe the forums as ``safe zones'' for sharing their thoughts.
The format often involves setting up community discussion groups, eight to 12 people, all volunteers, and ideally from diverse backgrounds. Neutral moderators are appointed to elicit a spectrum of viewpoints and keep the conversation from going on tangents.
In South Hampton Roads, forum sponsors have included the nonprofit Community Networking Association, which organized a series of weekly discussions about education last fall. More than 200 citizens, from an array of backgrounds, met in small groups to weigh the pros, cons and trade-offs of various school issues, and see if they could find common ground.
Mary Lou Urbaczewski, 48, a Virginia Beach nurse, said she joined Community Networking looking for the type of current-events conversations that used to happen around her family's kitchen table in western New York. Her grandfather, father and uncles would discuss community issues as they gathered at lunch time.
She fell away from this tradition when she moved to South Hampton Roads in 1973 and began her own family and career. She wasn't the only one.
``Everybody was so busy getting their jobs done and raising their families, so that's all there was,'' Urbaczewski said. ``Our generation was not showing our children how to talk about politics without treating it like it was some sort of joke.''
She's now a Community Networking board member and participated in the discussions about education.
``As you sit and talk in small groups like this, marvelous things begin to happen,'' she said. ``People find they can be honest with each other, including the teachers who came. Most everybody was truly being open . . . And you find that one thing you talk about makes you want to care about one more thing, and that makes you care about another thing, and you begin to feel a responsibility to keep talking with other people.''
It's what Jack Nurney used to find at the lunch counter at the Nansemond Drug Co.
``When there are opportunities to discuss things, you know your neighbors better, you know your comunity better, and sometimes you prevent misunderstandings,'' he said. ``You learn from others . . . and the more you know about other people's perspectives, the less inclined you are to have misunderstandings or have disagreements exacerbated.''
Are public-issue discussion groups a replacement for old-fashioned lunch counters and other traditional gathering points? Do they make community?
The forums ``are not the only way to go, but they're certainly a beginning to problem solving,'' said Stephanie P. Stetson, founder and president of the local Community Networking Association.
Can civil discussions at the local level change the tenor of national political debate?
``Some say it works best in changing the local community but it may not change how national politics work,'' Harwood said. ``I think they're right in the short run.
``But I also think that the more people come together, the more they change their local communities, then the more our political leaders will feel compelled to change the way they do business.
``One of the realities of our times is that there are no short-term answers to the dilemmas we face. The sooner we face that reality, the better off we'll be.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
BETH BERGMAN/The Virginian-Pilot
John D. Eure, left, and Jack Nurney talk over coffee at the
Nansemond Drug Co. lunch counter in 1994. Nurney says he misses
going to the lunch counter in Suffolk, which closed last month.
Graphics
FIVE WAYS TO PARLAY TALK INTO ACTION
1. Become a ``connector.'' Each neighborhood needs only a few
connectors, people who participate in several organizations - such
as PTAs, civic leagues, churches - and carry information and ideas
back and forth among the groups, says Richard Harwood, a public
issues researcher.
2. Organize block parties. ``It could be as simple as closing
your cul de sac for an afternoon and inviting neighbors from other
streets to bring their kids for games and a barbecue,'' said
Stephanie P. Stetson of the Community Networking Association.
3. Think of ``leadership'' in different, expanded ways. A leader
can be a person who helps organize a community crime-prevention
program or watches over neighborhood children so other citizens can
attend their civic league meetings.
4. Help create ``safe zones'' - places where people can speak
their mind, test ideas on one another, and learn from one another
without feeling someone is going to jump all over them, and without
feeling the pressure to take immediate action.
5. Even if you disagree, practice being civil and respectful of
each other's opinions.
MYTH OR REALITY\ Are we losing places to talk together. The
number of:
Barbershops declined to 62,507 in 1990, from 108,279 in 1972.
Neighborhood taverns dropped to fewer than 50,000, from 152,000
at the end of World War II.
Drugstores with soda foundations plunged to 150 in 1994, from
more than 100,000 in 1910.
by CNB