photo by Lara Herscovitch
As I wrote in Part 1 and Part 2, growing up, I lived in an all-Black community; all land owners, which was rare. Three different personalities – my grandmother, my mother, and my dad – gave me perspective about the world, and choices and behaviors.
The first of the three — my grandmother — didn’t have a lot of faith in humans. She thought that on most days, most people were up to no good, either to be mean or because of ignorance.
My mother was the kindest person that I have had the privilege to know. She called me “sister” – and she’d always say, “sister, be nice.”
And the third — my dad — was no-nonsense, a person a few words. We counted on dad to take care of the family. When the world put him in a corner, he knew how to fight back.
It was later in adult life that I began to reflect on my personality, thinking about and reflecting upon my behaviors, choices and my distinct ways of seeing the world. I began to recognize and see distinct combinations of my mother, father and grandmother in me, and in this world. The parts of me that come from my father and grandmother are very present, but I keep them in balance. I wasn’t a trouble-maker per se, but I did administer justice to those around me. I believe that in this world we need all three and more.
The values for the children in our family were fairly clear. We were expected to do well in whichever school we were in. My two younger sisters went to the white school after integration, an older sister was the first Black librarian hired by New York City, and I was among the first small number of students to attend graduate school at Mississippi State University.
In our family, it was about who you be as a human being. It was not about ambitions and material stuff; getting rich and all that was definitely only on TV. It was about living your life and being a decent human being, using your talents and skills for good. My mother wanted us to treat each other nice, she wanted all of her kids to finish high school, to work hard to do our best. The thing she had the most emotion about, she never wanted any of her kids to go to jail.
I remember when my mother was able to vote. I was young, living in the Mississippi Delta. She told all of us, the kids, to always vote and never take our opportunity to vote for granted.
I took that seriously, so I’ve always made it a point to vote. And around the fringes I was engaged in the electoral process, frequently volunteering on election day at the polls or in the community to get out the vote.
Years ago, as an adult, I moved to New Haven when my then-husband was a student at Yale. We first lived in Goatville and then Beaver Hill neighborhoods. My usual way of helping out and being involved in the electoral process and sometimes helping candidates, was to serve on the Ward committee (the party apparatus at the city district level). I volunteered, knocked on doors, gathered signatures to get a candidate on the ballot, passed out literature, made phone calls, and worked on election day.
When later I moved downtown, I wanted to be on the Ward committee in my new district (District 7). Being a Ward committee co-chair is elected; but being a Ward committee non-chair member is appointed. So I made a point to go and meet my Alderperson.
The Alderperson I met with (Alderperson, Alderwoman, Alderman was later changed to Alder) was co-chair of the District 7 Ward Committee, so he had the power to appoint members. I let him know I’d moved into the district, had been on a Ward committee before, and wanted to still be engaged on the Ward committee here. But he told me that there were no vacancies. I asked him to be in touch and let me know if there’s a vacancy.
A year passed, and I didn’t hear a peep. I thought, that’s strange, because I know the process, and I know that you’re always looking for folks. It’s a rarity when someone comes to you to volunteer to become involved.
So I did my own investigating. The Town Committee Chair at the time had an office downtown; I walked by one day and made an appointment to meet with him. He informed me that over half of District 7 Ward committee was vacant.
I thought, ok, I see. It was a lot. He had two positions – Alderperson and Ward committee co-chair – and he’s treating them that way? So irresponsible.
Now I don’t think I want to just be on the Ward committee, I want to be co-chair.
I called the Alderperson up and asked him to go to lunch, and told him what I found out. I made a proposal – I said, since you’re an Alderperson, what I’d really appreciate is if you would support me becoming co-chair, and we can work together. I said I would support him as Alder, and would be willing to engage other people in the process.
For some reason, he didn’t like that idea; he said he didn’t think he could do it.
I said it’s ok, I know that it’s a big decision, why don’t we meet again in two weeks after he’d had time to think it over? We met again in two weeks, and he reaffirmed that he couldn’t do it. He had dug his heels in; there was something else going on.
That’s when I decided I was no longer interested in being the co-chair, now I was interested in being the Alder. I told him, it’s unfortunate – I think then you’ll have a challenge, I think I’ll run for Alder. I thanked him for meeting, and we left.
Afterward, I’m thinking, Alder, do I really want to do this? But it wasn’t about being Alder, it was about standing up for a process that said it was democratic (and in the Democratic Party). It was also about not letting him choose my boundaries of what I could or could not do in that arena.
It was my grandmother, my mother, and my father in me.
I grew up as a middle child of nine – then eight — my oldest brother was killed at age 11 in a farm accident, a very painful time in our family.
As a middle child, I learned to get along with my older and younger siblings. I wasn’t one to create trouble, but if you were mean, inconsiderate, disrespectful of boundaries, you’d know you got in my way. It wasn’t that I thought it through, it was just me surviving in a big family, and having part of my father’s temperament.
But running for the Board of Alders was a heavy decision – I was going back and forth. I had a conversation with a couple of people who were on the Alder board, including Stanley Rogers. He agreed that he would support me if I decided to run. I thought, oh, that’s promising.
It was still so weighty – and I knew it was getting close to the time where I needed to decide. That weekend, I decided to stay in, be quiet and listen.
I was thinking of reasons and excuses not to run. But then there was such clarity, a ‘just do it.’ (This was before Nike came out with that statement.)
I let Stanley know, and he said he would be my campaign manager. We decided, along with a couple of other people on the Ward committee, that we had to be pragmatic – the Alder had been there for 12 years, and I had moved into the district two years ago.
We looked at past voting histories in the district in various elections, to calculate what would be a winning number. We knew if we could get this many people to vote, that would be a win. We started there.
First, we got signatures for me to be on the ballot as a challenger. Then, every day in the afternoon, we would spend a certain amount of time talking with people in the district, introducing myself and with a very straightforward message. Every day we’d come back and discuss – who did we talk to, what did they say, who do we need to follow up with.
On election day, I won by 37 votes.
I heard that the person I defeated went into depression, just could not believe that I pulled it off. (I didn’t know I could pull it off either.)
My grandmother wasn’t around by then. If she had been, she would have known I was in office, but she would not have believed it either. She would have been happy, but she would have probably thought it was a fluke, or like watching a movie or something.
But it’s like what I learned in farming. You don’t know the outcome, you do what you do everyday and you expect a certain result. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don’t. But you do your part.
I was now Alder, but never ran for Ward committee co-chair. I don’t believe in “hogging” positions that are about collective well-being. It’s not about the power grab for me, it’s about doing something to make a difference in somebody’s life in a real way. I owe that to my mother; she instilled in me the heart part.
I decided that I was not going to put up a challenger to take him out of the co-chair position. Which did not prove to be a good decision, to tell the truth. He stabbed me in the back anytime he could.
In New Haven, Alder elections are every two years. He ran against me the next election, and he lost again, by more than the first time.
The next election, he chose not to run. And that’s when I said, ok, I don’t need to run for Alder anymore, I’ve made my point and can move onto other stuff. I was Alder actually for ten years, and after that, it was time. It consumes so much of you. I lived downtown, so anytime I stepped outside my door I was fair game to hear about someone’s needs — often gripes. Sometimes you just want to be incognito when you step out.
I really appreciate the experience from so many different vantage points. I got to learn New Haven in a deeper way, in a different way. My Ward was downtown, and it bordered on many other districts and sections – The Hill, Dwight, a lot of Yale and the medical school, CMHC, City Hall, the Town Green Business District, Wooster Square and East Rock were on the edge. People from many countries around the globe lived in Ward 7 — a lot of intersections.
But I needed to go; it’s not “me.’ I have little patience for a lot of the nonsensical games of going around and around when all of you know you’re just playing a game. I don’t mind playing games, but if I’m playing a game I will play a game. If I’m going to sit down and negotiate on behalf of the district or city, I’ll negotiate. I give myself that clarity, I think it makes a difference.
For many, it’s all about “a deal;” that’s what people do most of the time. And if that’s what they do most of the time, why would I expect them to do something different? So you figure out who is invested and what each party would like. It is critical to realize your power at the table; when you change, others have a choice to make. They may leave the room, or try to figure out how to undermine you in the room, or try to dominate or intimidate you in and outside the room.
It took me into a lot of rooms – Yale University structural improvements of heating and cooling systems, the medical school expansion. When I asked how the Howard Avenue lab would impact the community, I was told that it wouldn’t affect the community at all. And of course that can’t be true – there will be some consequences.
It was an opportunity, having their ear, to put something on the table that can benefit people. Whether they go for it or not you don’t have control over, but you do have control over what you put on the table and how you react to what they put on the table. They get to know what would be necessary. I asked what are the benefits for Yale, and how can the lab benefit the community, so that the community would want to take a risk with Yale.
After some talks, the med school proposed to partner with a public high school in the area, so that New Haven students could go to Yale for certain things, and learn to do research. Yale also offered $25,000 down payments to staff that wanted to buy a house and live in New Haven.
People have called me “trouble.” I get it from my father.
In the upheaval of the civil rights movement, coming through the Delta, our house was considered a safe house. When civil rights people and other people were coming through, they couldn’t stay at hotels, there were certain addresses given out – when you’re in this area, this is a safe place to go if you’re staying overnight, if you need a meal. My family’s name was on that list.
One summer in the early to mid-1960s, a group of students came down to stay in the area and work. I don’t know what they were doing exactly, I was young. But one stayed at our house – a young lady from New York. She was in college, and she started dating my cousin. It was very dangerous. The word spreads fast. It was noticed, and it wasn’t liked.
There were a group of white men who got together to talk about it, felt my father had stepped over the line, gone too far and that kind of stuff. How would they teach him a lesson.
Twenty-five or thirty years later, my father was talking to one of those white men. He said to my father, “JD, do you remember when…” He said there were seven or eight of us who thought you went too far. We were talking about stopping you on the road late at night and teaching you a lesson. But we decided not to do it. And the reason why we decided not to do it, was that we knew that if we did that, some of us might not have walked away.
Then the white guy asked a question like someone reflecting and wondering out loud at the same time: “JD what would you have done if we had done that?” My father in a slowly-wondering-deliberate tone said, “I really don’t know…” It was a matter-of-fact conversation between two men that had known each other for decades. They both stood in silence for a moment — the conversation ended and both went about their day.
Which brings me back to my mom saying to me, “sister be nice.” I am grateful to have my father and my grandmother’s temperament, and I channel my mom. I work to be nice to self, family, neighbors near and far, and our mother earth.
At this moment, my hope and expectation for us is to do better than we’ve been doing, collectively. But I don’t expect that to happen without real work. If it were that easy, it would have happened. You take the opportunity that is presented to you, and you look at how to make it a little better. That’s where I start; simple.
Meaningful change is simple and complicated. So, I add to my mother’s “sister be nice,” a phrase often used by my father: “let’s just start where we are.” Let us smile, present in this moment, take a deep and steady breath, roll up our sleeves, go about being the world we wish to live into. Like the late John Lewis reflected about many times, let us create Good Trouble!
To reach Esther directly: sunflowerlvx@comcast.net