Claire Simonich (pictured), a first-year law student at Yale, sent in this essay about voting on Tuesday for the first time in New Haven.
On Tuesday, I voted in the New Haven election. I registered with a kind and competent staff in city hall and voted with the help of friendly volunteers at the polls.
I recently moved to New Haven from Glastonbury, an affluent and quiet suburb. In Glastonbury, I voted each year in the middle school I had attended. I drove down an idyllic fall road to the polls and often encountered former classmates or teachers in the halls. The experience was comfortable and sheltered.
This summer, I moved to the Chapel West/Dwight neighborhood to attend Yale Law School. For the past months, I’ve touted my neighborhood as an ideal model for city development. The Chapel West Special Services District is active and visible, with folks cleaning up trash and placing decorations. The neighborhood has a mix of graduate students, low-income residents and commercial tenants. Confining myself to the two block radius that I defined as “mine,” I was blissfully unaware of the larger neighborhood surrounding me.
When I registered to vote, I was excited to be placed in Ward 2. I could have been in Wards 1 or 7 where many Yale students live, but I appreciated my association with a more diverse district. I was excited to vote at Troup Academy, a local school I hadn’t visited.
On Tuesday morning, I walked half a mile west on Edgewood to my polling place. In one short block, my simple image of Chapel West changed. Foreclosed homes bordered empty lots. Rubbish lay in the streets next to neglected “neighborhood cleanup” signs. The streets were remarkably quiet; the only bustle heard was blocks away as students headed to campus.
Nobody that I encountered looked like me. With my blonde hair and hurried step, I stuck out and I felt out. This outsider feeling was new and disconcerting. I plan to work in civil rights. I’ve visited Central American villages as the first white person seen in years. I fancy myself rather empathetic. But this feeling of exclusion in my own neighborhood shook any belief in my powers of empathy. This felt different. This might be how minorities feel in predominately white contexts like the law school. What an identity crisis.
My crisis was exacerbated by the voting context. As James Berger noted in his opinion “Can we see past Black and White?” the mayoral election is sharply divided along racial lines. I felt torn between my professional colleagues at Yale in the Elicker camp and the signs in my dilapidated neighborhood calling for Harp. How could I fit in in this ward? How could my interests be the same as folks facing foreclosure, crime, and sharp racial divisions? Of course, democratic elections mean that we can have different interests. If Dwight integrates further, these interests will become more of a discussion and less of a dividing line.
This dividing line grew brighter when I returned to the law school. I entered buzzing with disappointment, excitement, and sociologic insights. Yet students and professors discussed the New York City election with no mention of New Haven. I suspect few students registered in New Haven or voted at all. Election Day was bright and vivid in Dwight. Volunteers and colorful signs peppered Troup Academy. Though I was the only voter in the polling place, Election Day was palpable in Dwight and silent at the law school.
Voting in New Haven reinforced that this city is my home. But it also reinforced my alienation. As a Yale student, I live a very different life than families in foreclosed homes one block away. We all have much to learn from each other and much to gain from a dissolved dividing line. Voting is a powerful way to break down this line.
I appreciate the reflection. I have often felt the same way when traveling within intensely divided cities for the first time.
However, generally you want to visit a neighborhood at least a few times before you think you understand or can write about it, especially when it is so different from your own (not just historically or culturally, but also in terms of physical composition and density).
Although Dwight has some vacant lots and visible decay in a few pockets, it also has many cohesive streets, and there are areas with much higher homeownership rates a few blocks in any direction.
If this article suggests anything, it's that the city needs to focus much more on the physical decay which becomes the image of some of our city blocks. Decay may seem like a minor signs of trouble compared to police activity, but in reality it is a potent psychological and physical marker which causes people and investment to steer clear of an area. Police activity is troublesome, but generally a response to a specific incident that might be reversible next month. Meanwhile, decaying buildings establish perceptions across generations.
Disorder also impacts walkability. I go far out of my way to avoid streets that I know are likely to be covered with broken glass or litter, in favor of more well-kept routes. This is not because of fear, it is simply because it is unpleasant to walk through so much trash with your friends or family.
Unfortunately, Harp and Nemerson are not going to be able to succeed in their plan to revitalize Dixwell Plaza without addressing the simple problems that surround it, which this author has clearly illustrated. Few are going to walk, shop, or want to live there, no matter how many tens of millions of dollars are spent on a new structure or retail strip. Try walking from the Apple Store to just the first block of Dixwell Ave - the trash and broken glass increases exponentially every 100 feet, even though the entire area is owned by Yale.