I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE

Please don't take the title of this posting as being somehow threatening. Some postings ago, I suggested that a useful exercise for high school government students to engage in is to identify those individuals in their community who hold power. I mentioned a few ways to do that, but basically the idea was to see which residents hold leadership positions in several economic areas such as industry, professional services, financial services, and the like. After the areas are identified, a student can find which entities within the different economic areas reported the largest budgets. The leaders of those entities, one can safely assume, wield relatively more power than their fellow community members. In order to further confirm their power position, one can, as a further step in this inquiry, check out the physical attributes, such as where their offices are, the physical appearances and physical amenities of these offices, the leaders' residential areas, their commuting patterns – what they see going to and from work – and their areas of socializing. This need not be too intrusive – we don't want kids being accused of stalking – but a general view and understanding of the physical environments these leaders experience can give one a sense of the exposures these leaders of the community confront as they go about their mostly work related activities.

One hypothesis they can test is: “[i]t can only be said that location tends to isolate the men of power from the mass of citizens less powerful than themselves and from community problems.”¹ That is a conclusion that Floyd Hunter arrived at in his respected study on community power holders. He reached this conclusion from inspecting and visiting many of the areas where the identified leaders lived and where they worked. And the finding seemed more true for those leaders who represented organizations with more financial resources than those that had less. Of course, these more cloistered leaders could afford lifestyles that protected them from exposure to the more seamy and distasteful realities such as slum neighborhoods and crime ridden areas. But the question remains: how sensitive can these leaders be to the problems of their community if they are constantly shielded from them?

And this says nothing of the influence they enjoy over governmental decision-makers. So it is not just that they are potentially ill-equipped to address problems but, through their influence, they will proactively prevent those more exposed to the problems to implement the policies that might be helpful; to address those problems will probably call on diverting resources from those projects and maintenance programs they might understand as being in their interests to pursue and support. At least that might be an off-shoot of the physical conditions surrounding the lives of the powerful.

Of course, direct exposure is not necessarily needed in order to get a sense of what is “out there.” One can read and see media that reports on conditions. We know of philanthropic efforts by the wealthy across the nation. Each metropolitan area can boast of a community of charity givers and organizers that do much needed work to relieve – not solve – the level of deprivation in their communities. But it is only government that can really put a dent in the level of deprivation that confronts those needier members of the community. And, of course, this whole area of concern, from a federalist perspective, is one of equality – in terms of meeting essential needs and providing meaningful opportunity. So if those most influential are partial against such government action, the chances of local political will being sufficiently present to address the needs of the poor, even to the degree federalist thought would lead one to favor, would be small indeed. Our students should become cognizant of these relevant conditions within their community – not necessarily a simple aim to accomplish. Here is how Hunter describes the level of transparency involved:

They [the powerful] are able to enforce their decisions by persuasion, intimidation, coercion, and, if necessary, force. Because of these elements of compulsion, power-wielding is often a hidden process. The men involved do not wish to become identified with the negative aspects which the process implies, and their anonymity will be respected.²

But once informed, whether students then choose to become concerned or even involved with these political dynamics is a value choice they should be free to make. 

 

1Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study of decision makers. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. Quotation on p. 22; emphasis in the original.

2Ibid., p. 24.