| This is not to say that
Fresno doesn’t hold a special position in the
cosmos for me. My family still lives there, so I come
back a few times a year to visit. There are too many
connections to the people there—a few friends
from school, the piano teacher I still try to see
every time I’m home—for me to truly not
look back at all.
But in all honesty, to me my hometown is really more
of a schtick. I love to tell stories about the ride-by
shooting (ride rather than drive because the shooter
was on a bicycle) at my high school. Or of the time
I looked out the window of my office to see a police
shooting (during the last time I was in Fresno for
more than a visit; working there in between my sophomore
and junior years of college,). There’s also
the public relations slogan “Fresno—smile
when you say that” that my sisters and I think
sounds much better as a threat than as a slogan. And
the fact that the current mayor was previously best
known for playing “Bubba” on the TV series
“In the Heat of the Night.” Halfway through
his first term as mayor, he made a Christian-themed
western starring himself and his wife that even the
Fresno Bee reviewer couldn’t give above a “D.”
For me, Fresno is a punchline, not somewhere I ever
want to move back to. I relish the anecdotes, but
when a friend recently asked me if he should be planning
a trip to Fresno for a wedding, after my explanation
that no, six years of dating my partner still doesn’t
mean we’re getting married any time soon, I
also laughed and said “And there is no way in
hell that I am getting married in Fresno!”
It’s an odd experience, therefore, when I talk
to people who have a deep attachment to where they’re
from. While out to dinner with a friend recently,
as he talked about wanting to move back to the South
eventually, even though he already has already begun
a successful career in Washington, I marveled at the
pull his roots have on him. I know several people
who chose law schools in part because they want to
stay in the states in which they were raised, and
thought that studying at schools there would be of
more use to them than going off to an arguably better
school across the country.
That kind of consideration has never entered my mind.
Even now, as my fellow first-year law students start
to send resumes out for summer jobs, some people are
choosing where to send applications to based on where
they want to settle down after graduation—and
for many, that’s where they originally came
from. My usual indecisiveness is only exacerbated
by the fact that I have no set conception of where
I want to live after law school, other than “not
Fresno” and “not Texas.”
In the Times article, there is considerable discussion
of what Fresno might do to stop the brain drain. There
is a mention of how this may be the flip side of the
traditional marketing of Fresno as a low-cost place
to do business, and whether the Mayor’s efforts
to draw more “knowledge workers” will
be successful.
When writing this column, I came to a bit of a frustrated
standstill on how to finish it. I could make some
suggestions of ways to improve Fresno, but I doubt
that they would be well-received, and I am certain
they would not be acted upon. Raise municipal taxes,
and spend the money on public transportation, planting
trees, making parks useful, fun, and safe, and improving
the schools. Don’t build eighteen foot high
“arches” over a downtown intersection
and pretend you are St. Louis. Don’t drive away
world-class symphony conductors because they are black
and gay (yes, Fresno did that). Work with regional
and state authorities to clean the filthy, unhealthful
air.
I wish Fresno would do all these things. But barring
a fundamental shift in the way Fresnans think (and
vote), I don’t see them happening any time soon.
I see yet more opportunities for me to jokingly send
out emails to friends noting news like the recent
Brookings Institution report naming Fresno as the
city with the worst concentrated poverty in the nation.
I see more jokes about the Police Chief, who was twice
investigated in the 1980s for allegedly having sex
with a 16-year old girl. (When asked about the investigations
when promoted to Chief in 2001, he refused to either
confirm or deny, and only replied by discussing his
conversion to born-again Christianity. Sound familiar?)
In short, Fresno needs to do more than make a few
speeches about knowledge workers. It needs to make
a concerted and active effort to alleviate the crushing
and concentrated poverty. It needs to acknowledge
the hypocrisy of agribusiness interests refusing illegal
immigrants services like education or hospitals, but
being happy to employ them. It needs a monumental
change in perspective and priorities before I, or
I suspect any of my brain drain brethren, will ever
think of Fresno as a place to move back to.
Dara Purvis is a weekly contributor to Raw Story.
Visit her on the web @ www.DaraPurvis.com.
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