No Sidewalks, No Solidarity, No Service

Feelings of isolation in my hometown

Honky Tonks, Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens

I recently went to Virginia Beach to spend a weekend with my parents. Visiting home is always kind of weird for me because while I relish seeing my family, I feel very out of place in the Hampton Roads area. While there’s certainly more to the region than its concentration of conservatism, naval bases, jingoism, and unmuffled muscle cars that zoom down ever-widening highways, I tend to hone in on those aspects every time (I was never one to spend my weekends at the beach).

Virginia Beach also stands out for being a cursed land of suburban sprawl. For all of the problems we have in Charlottesville around our transit system and the city being planned around cars rather than people, its issues have nothing on my hometown.

In high school, before I could drive, the place I liked to hang out most was Lynnhaven Mall. They had an arcade with Dance Dance Revolution out front—3rd Mix Korean, then 5th Mix—that my friends and I would regularly drop $20 worth of tokens in. In those days, Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) had a slogan that emphasized the freedom that one can experience by taking the bus: “HRT Lets Us B-Us.” One day, hooked by their [rather genius!] marketing campaign, I thought that perhaps I wouldn’t have to rely on my parents to drive me the 35 minutes to get my groove on. Taking one look at the timetable, I quickly gave up.

Ask the internet for a retro picture and ye shall receive

Twenty years later, if I tried again, I would still have to walk 20 minutes to catch a bus that runs every hour to then ride for 40 minutes to the mall. Recalling how just the other week I gave up on trying to ride the bus that stops next to my house—which also runs on hour-long service—because it was 20 minutes behind schedule… there’s no chance that attempting to catch that ride is worth it.

While we were in town, Jen and I also decided to head to a new bubble tea place that we saw advertised on Instagram. It took about 20 minutes to get to the strip mall it was in by car (most trips are that length or longer). The inside not having a particularly exciting vibe, we decided to step outside and walk a little. Our options were to traverse the giant parking lot out front or walk on the sidewalk past the storefronts to the next block. We decided on the latter and found ourselves at yet another strip—this time made up of small office suites—and yet another large concrete lot.

We probably should have just stayed in the shop.

Street view from the boba joint. There is zero chance that this parking lot has ever been half full even once.

Anti-communities

That experience of being more or less forced to stay in the confines of the strip mall due to having no obvious better alternative unless I wanted to drive somewhere was clarifying. I started to consider the malls in terms of the isolationist goals of white flight suburbanism, which led me to think more about some of the features of my parents’ neighborhood that familiarity had relegated to background noise.

One day while out, Jen pointed out how there are no sidewalks to be seen there other than directly outside of the elementary school across the street. This lack of pedestrian infrastructure inherently limits easy entry into and safe journey within a neighborhood. It’s funny, as someone who has been a part of advocating for the advancement pedestrian infrastructure in his own city for years, to never have given it a second thought while home. In the whole of my teenage years it never felt unnatural to walk or skateboard in the middle of the street.

A street in my old neighborhood

Over the last half-decade or so, my parents and others have started to put up little posts at the foot of their yards to prevent people from putting their tires in the grass and scuffing their lawn. While it may be a choice made to maintain cosmetics rather than a tool intended to isolate—ignoring how ugly and distracting the posts themselves are—, it serves as the latter and adds to the list of lawns’ crimes against humanity. No one—not even I!—can park in front of my parents’ house now. If cars are parked on either side of the street, the poles force an otherwise wide corridor into a narrow one-lane crossing.

Even if suburban neighborhoods consider themselves to be a community, they are inherently anti-communal. The neighborhoods themselves are meant to isolate and to keep “others” out, even if those “others” are realities of their actual local community. People’s real local community is not just made up of those that live near to them; rather, it’s made up of an interconnected network of those that also work, play, and learn regularly in the same spaces. That reality can be hard to see and feel in suburbia, regardless of whether the homeowner intended to don blinders or not.

Tell me, who’s watching?

One of the ironies of suburbia is that these isolated areas are meant to give residents a feeling of safety, but instead it perpetuates mistrust, fear, and paranoia.

While we were out walking our dog, I noticed a house that had some sort of “No Trespassing, Keep Out!” sign affixed to its high-walled fence. ‘Here?’

My dad told us a story of how a package of his was delivered to the wrong address, so he went to the house it was delivered to in hopes they had it. They were home, but elected to talk to him through the mail slot. They claimed not to know what he was talking about, so he went to his car to leave. He caught them peeping out their door suspiciously as he started to drive away.

Virginia Beach is by far the most populous city in Virginia—it is also one of the least dense.

This warped atmosphere is, of course, fed by the media. Local news’ crime bias has been around for a long time (there’s an excellent Citations Needed podcast on this topic). If you’re not familiar with the evils of NextDoor… I wouldn’t recommend going on it. A quick search for “NextDoor” + “paranoia” will tell you all you need to know. Basically, perception is more powerful than evidence, so decreasing crime rates do not result in decreased paranoia.

It’s all very sad. It’s also very intentional. The ruling class leans into conservative ideologies, fascism, and the police state in order to consolidate and maintain power through fear, otherism, dogwhistling, and racial scapegoating. Isolation is a result.

One neighbor flies their “Don’t Tread on Me” flag proudly on a high flagpole in the middle of their yard. State police, KKK, IDF, they’re all the same.

“Prayer is the best way to meet God. Trespassing is the fastest.” Apparently this neighbor of my parents’ isn’t too keen on the Lord’s Prayer.

Underpinning foundations of community

Here in Charlottesville, our DSA chapter has been hosting workshops to get people to share their ideas for the future of our work and what they need to engage in the chapter. One common thread has been the need to enhance our sense of community both internally and externally. Members expressed the want to do more low-stakes work as a chapter to build camaraderie, as well as engage the wider Charlottesville community more. In particular, the latter need was inspired by the high turnout and reception to our recent public education event around land banks as part of our Green Social Housing campaign.

Since I returned from a five-day trip to Cuba in October and as I continue to learn more about their socialist project, community has been at the forefront of my mind, as well. The United States has imposed a crippling blockade on Cuba for over 60 years. Yet, despite that, they continue to have one of the best healthcare systems in the world; they continue to have a near flawless literacy rate; etc. In fact, they continue to be not only resilient, but continue to advance their society, as evidenced by their scientific achievements and mass support for the most progressive family code in the world. These feats are possible due in no small part to their commitment to one another—their commitment to revolutionary solidarity and a sense of community that in creates a positive feedback loop with their socialist systems.

I often come back to the below image of Che Guevara helping to build the elementary school we visited in Havana as a source of inspiration. There is deep meaning in the fact that even the most famous members of the Revolutionary Vanguard, after taking power, built their new socialist society with their hands as well as their ideals. We can strive to emulate this example in the now.

How we do take the energy towards want of community as expressed by our members and work towards something that even slightly resembles the examples that our Cuban comrades put forth? How do we develop our commitment to one another and then expand that commitment by raising the consciousnesses of our neighbors? How do we chip away at—and not be reinfected by—the capitalist plague that warps our sense of what our relationships to one another can and should be?

And then, how do we ensure that we pass the heightened sense of community that we develop together along so that future generations continue the march towards that brighter horizon?

I’m reminded of Che’s writings in Man and Socialism in Cuba:

Our job is to keep the present generation, maladjusted by its conflicts, from becoming perverted and perverting the new generations.

…

In our society the youth and the Party play a big role. The former is particularly important because it is the malleable clay with which the new man, without any of the previous defects, can be formed.

Youth receives treatment in consonance with our aspirations. Education is increasingly integral and we do not neglect the incorporation of the students into work from the very beginning. Our scholarship students do physical work during vacation or together with their studies. In some cases work is a prize, while in others it is an educational tool; it is never a punishment. A new generation is born.

If we dedicate the time in our lives to work towards congregation instead of isolation, we will find the answers together.

Veneceremos,
Greg