Civic Pride - One Block at at Time

This summer, the City of Zion has been working with the Citizens United Behind Zion (CUBZ) committee in setting up neighborhood clean up days. Picking a section of the city and gathering some volunteers, city staff, and elected officials like myself to spend a Saturday morning picking up the litter along the public streets and alleyways.

This being the age of Social media, the event is promoted online, and pictures and videos are posted and shared to the public, often in real time. That is the world we live in now, and the other part of that world are the comments from the readers of those postings. I have read some comments about yesterday’s event and the previous one too, and there are some questions that deserve a more in-depth response than a simple reply on a comment thread.

Rather than getting tangled in the verbal weeds, I’ll briefly paraphrase the key points.

‘Thank you! Great job!’ Which needs no response other than an appreciative thumbs up, however there are other comments that are not so positive.

‘Why are you picking up trash for lazy and irresponsible people?’

‘Why is the City doing this instead of doing (commenter’s pet project) instead?’

‘Why didn’t you knock on their door and ask (tell) them to help clean up?’

‘I keep my property clean, why can’t they?’

I think these questions missed the point of doing these Clean Up days, let’s see if I can explain.

Ever since I started to involve myself in the civic life of Zion, one challenge keeps coming to the forefront; a large part of our population are not engaged with the community in a meaningful way. Many causes for this have been posited; transient renters, economic poverty, or just that people are simply too preoccupied with work and home life to get involved.

Problem, how do we cultivate a sense of community amongst these diverse groups? Let’s narrow the definition even further; how do we generate a sense of civic pride?

In my experience, if presented with a situation people will often try to meet expectations. They don’t always succeed, but they usually try. The same can be said for low expectations. If someone knows that because of where they live, or who they are that not much is expected of them, they tend to act accordingly.

Some people will argue that means we have to enforce compliance, just set the expectations and make them pay a penalty if they don’t follow through. I’d just point out that those codes, fines, and penalties already exist. If the threat of fines alone could shape everyone's actions, then all lawns would be as pristine as putting greens and not so much as a cigarette butt would find itself in a gutter, but that is not reality.

Civic pride cannot be created through fear, it has to be grown through personal interactions that encourage positive feedback, which in turn spreads those values to others.

Expectations won’t raise themselves, and as I see it, that is at the heart of what we are trying to do with the Clean Up Days, raise expectations. Spending the time to go to another neighborhood that most of us don’t live in, picking up litter and pulling old tires and televisions out of the alleys is the first step in demonstrating a value that we all care about and want others to follow; making our city a nicer place in which to live.

Changing people’s values and expectations will not happen overnight, persistence and a lot of sweat equity will be needed to foster the civic pride that we have been seeking.

We can do it; one street, one alley, one block at a time.