Somerville’s Changing Politics:  The Diaspora

Part 2 in a Series By William C. Shelton

The attraction of Somerville’s affordable housing, Irish and Italian enclaves, and thriving industrial economy made it the most densely populated American city in the middle of the last century.  Its 170 manufacturing plants provided wages sufficient to support a family, often with only one parent working.

Employees walked to their jobs or took the streetcar.  They and their families maintained a rich fabric of community based on neighborhoods, relationship networks, and scores of nongovernmental organizations.

This community fabric met social needs, provided real security, and was the medium for Somerville’s vibrant political culture.  In the 1950s, two enormous market forces began unraveling it:  suburbia and the collapse of the city’s industrial economy.

Reasons for the suburbs’ lure have are well understood, but it’s worth noting that those who left in search of privacy often found isolation.  Those fleeing congestion came to hemorrhage time and wellbeing in highway traffic. Those wanting to shed their working-class identity lived to experience an America where popular culture denies the existence of class while its reality becomes ever more brutal.

When the factories closed, workers took service, clerical, and sales jobs outside Somerville.  They rarely provided a wage sufficient for one worker to support a family. Now, more than 80% of us must leave the city each day to work.

Somerville’s population dropped to 77,000 in 1980.  This 25,000-person decline is dramatic, but two-to-three times that number left, to be replaced by newcomers.

The city’s interweaving relationship networks had provided an effective medium for rapid communication of political issues that mattered to people.  In family gatherings, veterans’ posts, union halls, church groups, fraternal organization, ethnic clubs, and neighborhoods people discussed issues’ implications and sought consensus.

The Somerville exodus took away these people who were the substance of organizational life.  Economic demands requiring two breadwinners and daily commuting left little time for it among those remaining.  They increasingly used their scant spare time to soothe increased stress with the balm of television.  Left over attention was insufficient for interaction and discussion.  Relationship networks withered.  Neighbors stopped sitting on their stoops.

These networks had not only been the medium for political discussion and understanding.  They had provided the framework for political organizing.  Advertising replaced organizing.  Spin replaced personal accountability by political leaders.  Information reaching voters is now often sketchy caricature, coming too late to make a difference.

In old Somerville, patronage had been an efficient way to staff government with good workers.  Disintegration of the community fabric eliminated the means by which public hiring officers had an exceptional understanding of applicants’ characteristics, and prompt, effective feedback on their job performance.  This left a kind of patronage whose primary function is maintaining loyal political troops.

Zoning and planning decisions based on personal loyalties rather than sound development policy converted abandoned factories to housing.  But housing creates twice commercial properties’ municipal costs, only two-thirds their tax revenue, and few permanent jobs.  So the City was forced onto welfare, reaching a point where more of the budget came from state aid than from property taxes.

As a group, those of old Somerville who remained after the diaspora were the most attached to the community, but the most risk averse.  They worked disproportionately in government, utility, and education sectors, because these provided the most security and were the least hard-hit.  They also voted more consistently than any group who came after them.

They have been decisive in electing every mayor and most aldermen.  They have been less than unanimous in the candidates that they support, but they have shared formative experiences.  They see neighbors priced and taxed out of their homes and the city.  They see an economy that cannot give their kids living-wage employment.  They see affluent newcomers who are slow to participate in and contribute to the community.  They come by their anger, disappointment, and skepticism honestly.

Among the city’s office holders are those who have exploited this distress.  They imply that their election will return Somerville to a time of security, shared prosperity, and community.  In fact, the enormous economic forces that continue to reshape the city are beyond their control. 

They could ease these forces’ impact on housing affordability, employment opportunity, and the tax burden.  But this would require understanding, political courage, and the willingness to estrange campaign contributors, which they lack.  Meanwhile, newcomers with new ideas have not persuaded old Somerville of the depth of their commitment or the efficacy of their vision.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

In 1958, Ford Motor Company closed the Edsel plant in Assembly Square, eliminating 1,100 jobs.  The same year, a volcanic eruption 3,000 miles away would have an effect on Somerville’s changing peoples and political culture.