BY SUSAN ORR AND JIM JOHNSON
After protracted conflict and numerous arrests, Mayor Tom Richards and Occupy Rochester reached an accord allowing the protesters to stay in Washington Square Park. Their agreement is crucially important because absent access to public space, effective freedom to speak and assemble, and along with them democracy, wither.
That said, the mayor has not actually engaged with our Occupiers. He claims, after all, that while sympathetic to many of their concerns, most fall far beyond the purview of his administration. Is it so difficult to see how "We Are the 99%!" is relevant to Rochester?
The Brookings Institution just issued a report tracing the growth since 2000 of concentrated urban poverty in America. The basic concept is this: Someone lives in concentrated poverty not just if she herself lives at or beneath the officially defined poverty line, but if 40 percent or more of all those residing in the same census tract as she also live at or below the official poverty level. In 2010 the official poverty level was $22,300 for a family of four.
Using this metric, the situation in Rochester is grim. Of the primary cities in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in America, Rochester ranks third in concentrated poverty. In relative terms Rochester is just ahead of Syracuse (fourth) and significantly ahead of Albany (20th) and Buffalo (29th). In absolute terms, Rochester has a population of 202,644, of whom 56,813 live at or below the poverty level. Of that poor population, 26,705 reside in concentrated poverty. That is just over 13 percent of the city's entire population.
Concentrated poverty has negative consequences. It tends to depress educational quality, real estate values, and private economic investment while placing upward pressure on crime rates, the cost of living, and local government expenditures. Each of these trends is disturbing. Shouldn't Mayor Richards consider them to be central to his concerns? According to the Brookings report, those living amid concentrated poverty confront a "double burden" - their individual poverty is compounded by contextual features of "the place in which they live." This, in turn, "complicates the jobs of policymakers and service providers working to promote connections to opportunity and to alleviate poverty."
The Brookings report, however, neglects other crucially important factors. Concentrated urban poverty has dire political consequences. While it does not break down the Rochester numbers by race, the report notes that, nationally, "African Americans remained the single largest" racial group experiencing concentrated poverty. There is no reason to suspect that Rochester diverges from that pattern.
Political scientists Cathy Cohen and Michael Dawson have demonstrated that African Americans who live in concentrated poverty are more likely to believe that politics works to the advantage of the wealthy and white. And they are less likely to participate in politics in various ways. As in the Brookings report, these findings identify a contextual impact over and above the burden of individual poverty. Significantly, Cohen and Dawson use a much lower threshold (30 percent) to measure the effects of concentrated poverty. So, given the levels the Brookings report establishes, it is likely that the negative political consequences of concentrated poverty in Rochester are especially pronounced.
Put bluntly, concentrated poverty like that found in Rochester is bad for our democracy. It reduces political participation among the least advantaged, making it unlikely that the political system will be responsive to their interests and values. Like their counterparts elsewhere, Occupy Rochester decries economic hardship and the highly skewed distribution of wealth and income. The concerns they articulate point directly to the plight of many city residents. This should not be hard for the mayor to understand.
Susan Orr is assistant professor of political science at the SUNY College at Brockport. Jim Johnson is professor of political science at the University of Rochester.
Mary Anna Towler's Urban Journal is on break this week. It will return next week.
Comments for "GUEST COMMENTARY: Our Occupiers, the mayor, and Rochester's 13 percent" (6)
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b sarbane said on Nov. 23, 2011 at 7:53am
Like the Occupy movement generally, I fail to see the point of this.
goodgov said on Nov. 23, 2011 at 10:03am
Occupy Rochester has no answers or solutions for our urban poverty crisis. Except to perhaps double down on failed programs that we can't afford. They do not represent a significant enough number of city residents (maybe a hundred out of over 200, 000) to be making "demands" OR to steer policy. Addressing occupy protesters and dealing with urban poverty are not the same thing, though the authors of this piece attempt to make this false equivalency. THEY DON"T SPEAK FOR US!
Alan Murphy said on Nov. 23, 2011 at 2:20pm
I appreciate this article, because it points out a lack of awareness in our mayor and some of our citizens of the interconnectedness of poverty and wealth (especially that wealth generated by greed and a rigged playing field). One thing I would like to point out about the article and a running narrative in Urban Journal is the tendency to point to concentrated poverty as a root problem- "concentrated poverty has negative consequences" when in fact much of poverty is a consequence of concentrated wealth. I know that the authors get around to connecting these dots but I believe some caution is in order to not make "those poor people in the city" at fault for the condition we're in as a region and nation.
I am proud of everyone in the Occupy movement for being brave enough to exercise their right to assemble in protest of real "failed programs that we can't afford", such as bailing out banks with seemingly no return to the taxpayers investment. I know why Occupy Rochester exists; if you fail to see the point, that's OK.
goodgov said on Nov. 30, 2011 at 10:02am
Mr. Murphy, the banks didn't bail themselves out, the US government did.
goodgov said on Nov. 30, 2011 at 10:14am
Urban policy, and policy dealing with urban poverty, should not be conducted to make suburban and urban white liberals FEEL better. It should be conducted to adress the problem. Wealth is not a zero sum game (over human history the rich have increased their wealth exponentially while universal standards of living have also increased). By zero sum logic (the same logic that Rick Perry apllies to the FED reserve) each human birth should make us all poorer. However, municipal and government budgets are very much a zero sum game. To spend money on policies that don't work, automatically takes money from those that do (or potential new ones). I am not against Occupy's rghteous anger, but rather movements based on feelings rather than solutions. And one's that target the wrong people. If the speed limit is 70, and you think it should be 50, you don't target the drivers who drive the limit, you target those who set the limit (or in Wall Streets case, the lack of limits).
craig said on Dec. 01, 2011 at 10:23pm
a letter the OAW crowd, purportedly literate, and most of the left should read and think about:
Dear Mr. President,
It is with a great sense of disappointment that I write this. Like many others, I hoped that your election would bring a salutary change of direction to the country, despite what more than a few feared was an overly aggressive social agenda. And I cannot credibly blame you for the economic mess that you inherited, even if the policy response on your watch has been profligate and largely ineffectual. (You did not, after all, invent TARP.) I understand that when surrounded by cries of “the end of the world as we know it is nigh”, even the strongest of minds may have a tendency to shoot first and aim later in a well-intended effort to stave off the predicted apocalypse.
But what I can justifiably hold you accountable for is you and your minions’ role in setting the tenor of the rancorous debate now roiling us that smacks of what so many have characterized as “class warfare”. Whether this reflects your principled belief that the eternal divide between the haves and have-nots is at the root of all the evils that afflict our society or just a cynical, populist appeal to his base by a president struggling in the polls is of little importance. What does matter is that the divisive, polarizing tone of your rhetoric is cleaving a widening gulf, at this point as much visceral as philosophical, between the downtrodden and those best positioned to help them. It is a gulf that is at once counterproductive and freighted with dangerous historical precedents. And it is an approach to governing that owes more to desperate demagoguery than your Administration should feel comfortable with. …
But what I do find objectionable is the highly politicized idiom in which this debate is being conducted. Now, I am not naive. I understand that in today’s America, this is how the business of governing typically gets done " a situation that, given the gravity of our problems, is as deplorable as it is seemingly ineluctable. But as President first and foremost and leader of your party second, you should endeavor to rise above the partisan fray and raise the level of discourse to one that is both more civil and more conciliatory, that seeks collaboration over confrontation. That is what “leading by example” means to most people.
Capitalism is not the source of our problems, as an economy or as a society, and capitalists are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be. As a group, we employ many millions of taxpaying people, pay their salaries, provide them with healthcare coverage, start new companies, found new industries, create new products, fill store shelves at Christmas, and keep the wheels of commerce and progress (and indeed of government, by generating the income whose taxation funds it) moving. To frame the debate as one of rich-and-entitled versus poor-and-dispossessed is to both miss the point and further inflame an already incendiary environment. It is also a naked, political pander to some of the basest human emotions " a strategy, as history teaches, that never ends well for anyone but totalitarians and anarchists.
With due respect, Mr. President, it’s time for you to throttle-down the partisan rhetoric and appeal to people’s better instincts, not their worst. …
Sincerely,
Leon G. Cooperman
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