Community Center Cuts and the Closing of an A&P

Recently, I went to a meeting concerning the budget of the Theodore D. Young Community Center. It revealed the tragedy of the cult of fiscal austerity during a prolonged economic downturn and high unemployment.

The Center is a special place for me. I swim there three or four times a week. I chat with my friends, most of whom I came to know during Barack Obama’s campaign to be President. The staff of the center and the community they serve are primarily African American, although there is a diverse cliental. I was the white guy who first canvassed the place for Obama, when most people at the center were still skeptical. For me, it’s a happy place, where I satisfy my exercise addiction, and where I can see the America that I imagine is emergent, multi-racial, multi-cultural, where people of different classes pursue happiness together, from the kids who go to after school programs and summer day camp to the senior citizens playing bingo, to teens roller skating and playing basketball, to the members of the Asian culture club, to the swimmers such as myself. It’s my American dream come true. Of course, as with all dreams, American and otherwise, there are disrupting realities that often force us to wake up. Such was the case with the budget meeting. I present my reflections on the meeting in two posts. First, this afternoon, I reflect on the context as I approached the meeting and as it opened. Tomorrow, I will report on the discussion about the community center, and its implications. I went to the meeting concerned. I left dismayed.

I read a flier announcing the event urging attendance. It warned of program cuts, highlighting many of the most popular, including the pool. Rumors were flying that the center was slated to be closed, which weren’t true. But in the age of government deficits and fiscal austerity, cuts sadly and irrationally seem inevitable.

I say irrationally because I know that this is not the time for spending cuts, despite the cutting frenzy in Washington D.C. and across the nation. It is broadly understood by a wide array of economists that public spending should not decrease in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis and deep recession, with persistently high unemployment. Conservatives might advocate tax cuts and increasing the money supply, while liberals prefer public spending, as remedies for recessions, but cutting spending during a recession or at a time of prolonged high rates of unemployment makes no sense. It only makes economic recovery more difficult. Further, as a sociologist, I know that this is the time when spending cuts are most likely to negatively affect the most vulnerable. This was the broad social and political economic background of the question and answer session at the Community center.

All the interested parties were present, staff and users of the center. We all worried that a beloved community center was going to be weakened, if not destroyed.

Concerned shopper in front of the A & P slated to close © Joe Laresse | The Journal News

As if to underscore the broader economic realities and injustices, the meeting started with a discussion about the closing of local A&P and Pathmark stores near the Center. Of the thirty two stores in the north east it is closing under bankruptcy protection, the branches that serve the primarily African American community of Fairview are being closed. The Town Supervisor, Paul Feiner, started the discussion by speaking to the issue. He promised shuttle buses for those without cars to a nearby A&P, a much smaller store, in an affluent, primarily white, part of town.

This clearly was not Feiner’s, or the Town Board’s, fault. Yet, I was struck by the narrowness of their response. This is actually a major scandal. African American communities have historically not had easy access to quality food stores. A problem solved by the market in good times, a good clean efficient supermarket near public housing and in a primarily African American community, was being unsolved by the market in hard times. I would like to know for the public record why the two stores that serve a significant African American community in Westchester are the ones being closed. I would like my town supervisor to press the issue: to call a news conference, to publicly ask our Congresswoman, Nita Lowey, and Senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, to get involved, to wonder how this might be related to the Michelle Obama’s campaign for improved nutrition, especially for the disadvantaged. Feiner was pursuing the proper policy, helping the community adapt to a very unfortunate development, but he wasn’t being a leader.

This was especially evident when we turned to the primary issue on the agenda, the community center’s budget, which I will turn to tomorrow morning.