“Our” Government

Posted by Carol Coletta on August 01, 2009

I remember my reaction the first time I encountered a security scanner at City Hall in Memphis.  I was furious.  I had once worked on the third floor of this building in the CAO's office.  Besides, this was my City Hall.  I paid for it with my tax dollars.  I elected the people who worked in it.  But now, I was being treated like a would-be criminal, an alien.  As I was screened for the first time, I remember standing there seething at the uniformed officers.  They were just doing their jobs, but, in my opinion, they had no legitimate right to do this particular job.

I was reminded of my reaction Thursday when I entered the Bronx County Building. It is a majestic building, one with impressive statuary on all sides, sitting on the borough's Grand Concourse.  But step inside, and the first impression is jarring.  Metal street barricades force visitors to snake through a line that eventually lands them at the front of a security machine.  There, I was asked to empty my purse of all "devices" (a procedure never required in the airports I travel through daily).  I was then required to give up my Flip camera, an obviously threatening device, to the guard employed for just that purpose.  (Think about that for a minute.  A public security officer's salary + benefits + a pension for life at, say, age 55.)

The whole experience flew all over me.  I can walk the streets of any city, board a metro train, enter a movie theater with no security check whatsoever.  But I can't enter City Hall or the Courthouse without considerable hassle in the name of security.

The previous evening I had had dinner with two successful men, one a high-powered attorney and one a major developer.  Both are very active in politics and generous in their personal philanthropy.  As we debated health insurance reform and the higher taxes they expected to have to pay, one finally said in exasperation, "I wouldn't mind paying higher taxes.  But what has government ever delivered?"

The conversation illustrated the sad fact that government has become a vending machine. Citizens put money in and expect services to come out.  It is a customer-provider relationship.  Citizens no longer feel like government is "theirs," that it is our way of collectively governing ourselves.  Instead, we feel alien from it. Government is not "ours." It is "theirs."

Every time I have to go through a security scanner to get into what ought to be a public building that acknowledges it is, indeed, public -- of the people -- the feeling that government is "theirs" grows stronger.