Seeing is different than being told.
— Kenyan proverb
I’ve said this or something like it more than once, but the thought has nagged me enough lately, including in this space last week, that I think it bears some further reflection. The thought is this: Five years from now — the year 2020, as it happens — Birmingham will be set decisively, and perhaps irrevocably, upon one of two sharply divergent paths.
One path is that of a city that is making investment in its citizens the foundation for a thriving — and largely self-sustaining — municipal economy. That version of Birmingham, in turn, is the engine of a metropolitan economy that is regional in scope and statewide in impact and influence. Household incomes rise across the board, as companies attracted by the results of Birmingham’s investment in public education join local startups nurtured by forward-looking policies and direct public and private investment of financial and human resources to form a critical mass for optimal job creation and expansion of the local and regional labor pool.
Prosperity increases. Poverty decreases. Age-old angers and divisions fade like the embers of an untended fire. Innovation and creativity flourish. A sense of community grows.
The other path, of course, is the one on which Birmingham has ended up time and again, as reliably as mud after a rainstorm. Which is to say, the road that leads us right back to where we have always been — a city of opportunities missed, of divisions unbreached, of possibilities stunted or stillborn, of public trust misspent and abused, of promise (yet again) deferred.
Which path will Birmingham take? Will we buck our history — oh, let us not be ashamed to say it, our heritage — and choose the road less (or, in our case, never) traveled? Can we overcome the barriers, self-erected and otherwise, that have held us back while other cities caught and surpassed us, in terms of economic growth, political cohesion, and sense of civic purpose? If we cannot, then we’re kidding ourselves about the sustainability of the Paris-on-the-CSX into which we fancy ourselves burgeoning at present.
For one thing, we’re not attracting enough jobs, nor are we generating enough job growth internally. According to figures cited by Mayor William Bell in 2014, approximately 2,000 new jobs were created by companies relocating to, or expanding their operations in, Birmingham; meanwhile, the Birmingham Business Alliance — self-described as a “dynamic advocate, unifying voice and constant catalyst for economic development and business prosperity” — claimed a total of more than 3,000 new jobs created in 2014 in the seven-county region that, in addition to Jefferson County, includes Bibb, Blount, Chilton, St. Clair, Shelby and Walker.
Pick either number you like and start crowing. Just don’t crow too loudly or proudly, because neither comes near to measuring up to what’s happening — what has been happening for at least a generation — in cities that Birmingham wants to emulate, or at least with which we’d like to exist in the same ecosystem of economic success and cultural éclat.
Take Charlotte, which added nearly 37,000 jobs to its local economy last year (they’re also doing pretty well in 2015 to date; in the month of March alone, the city announced 8,300 new jobs). Austin added 32,000 new jobs, while Nashville welcomed 20,000. Just up the road from us, Chattanooga, with a metropolitan population that’s about 40 percent of Birmingham’s, saw 4,000 new jobs created in 2014; if I’m not off on my math, that’s more than either 2,000 or 3,000.
What makes the difference? The predominant factor, I would argue, is the far-sighted investment of public dollars and resources in programs, projects and initiatives that both address community needs and support the successful attraction and retention of jobs and capital.
Mass transit. Infrastructure planning. Education. Public health. Affordable housing. Community building. These are the stepping-stones of upward mobility for the poor, expansion of the middle class, and income growth and enhanced quality of life at all levels. These are investments that pay dividends across generations, and that help foster and sustain a social and political climate that yields economic justice, social progress and civic consensus.
These are the things on which the reputations of cities are made, and by which their relative “greatness” is measured. And these are the kinds of things, by and large, that the successful cities of the past generation have had the foresight and civic will to assign highest priority — on the assumption, broadly speaking, that if your object is to build a house that will withstand the ravages of time and circumstance, it helps to have a foundation on which to anchor it.
In Birmingham, movement even in the general direction of outcomes that benefit the masses can be torturous. At any given time, any number of factors can come to bear against the interests of the community as a whole, and its poorest and most vulnerable people in particular. Or, as a friend put it to me recently, relative to a conversation about low voter turnout in recent municipal elections, “People don’t have any hope because they don’t have anything to base hope on. They’ve never seen any evidence that those who run things even know they exist. They haven’t seen much of anything trickling down.”
None of which is to say that we are not making progress in Birmingham. Far too often, though, our progress is made in spite of areas in which we perennially find ourselves lacking: Funding; coordination; public information and awareness; courageous and visionary political leadership; substantively productive engagement between government, citizens and the business community.
Even so, the road to wherever it is we want Birmingham to go (have we decided that, by the way?) is a long and narrow one, and one upon which we are not yet securely embarked. We need to mark every milestone, acknowledge each step forward, even as we remain ever mindful of our shortcomings, of the odds stacked against us, and of the many dangers, toils and snares that bestrew our path.
I’ll say it once more: The primary obstacle that Birmingham faces is its own history, its own propensity to stand at a moment of decision and choose the wrong path — and to do so knowing that it is the wrong path, knowing that we are choosing exclusivity over inclusion, the present over the future, the short-lived comforts of superficial change over the hard-earned rewards of healing and empowering transformation.
Fred Shuttlesworth used to say of Birmingham that, “The Lord knew I lived in a hard town, so he gave me a hard head.” And maybe that’s what is required to effect real and lasting change in this proverbial hard place: Enough people with hard heads — and strong backs and willing hands and hearts full of genuine love for Birmingham. Enough people who will settle for nothing less than a city that makes creating opportunity and meeting the needs of citizens the defining criteria of greatness.
We do seem to be gaining those in abundance. That renews my hope on a daily basis, even as I find that the cloak of optimism suits me less and less. The question is, can we — the people of Birmingham, the presumptive beneficiaries of the public domain — get ourselves together and take the organized actions necessary to put Birmingham in possession of its own birthright and in control of its own destiny.