Day 1.

"America, I discovered, is a country that feels badly about itself, and when it is motivated to participate in politics, it does so mainly out of hatred and contempt for the guy on the other side, not inspiration and idealism." - Matt Taibbi on the 2004 Presidential election.


Apparently the seats of Elkhart's municipal leaders have undergone a bit of a paradigm shift. Gone is the Mayor who carried himself with the disheveled demeanor and honesty of a used care salesmen and the city council has seen itself shift a little more to the left. In my usual stops I learned that council members Ron Troyer and Rod Roberson kept their seats.

I paid city council a visit this afternoon searching for the new roster because the copies floating around the library were out of date and found that the secretaries were a bit behind in making sure the data is easily available to the public 8 days after the new Mayor has taken office. I was told that I would have the completed roster e-mailed to me.

The Park's Board building seemed to be exactly the same as I remembered it. I stepped into the office to speak with a friend to let her know I was in town. To my surprise, she invited me in immediately and we engaged in a fascinating conversation concerning the moral of Elkhart's inner city constituents and how it compares and contrasts to the constituents literally residing on the other side of the tracks.

Elkhart's inner city is a perpetually gray, decaying place where the streets teem with wandering skeletal figures with various shades of brown skin and missing teeth. The houses seem to sink into the ground under some invisible ominous force. A patron of a barbershop on Main St. once said to me that Elkhart was a trap that couldn't be escaped. Even those who manage to get better than a factory job out of high school (if they got out of high school) would still find themselves wading through a virtual quagmire of hopelessness perpetuated by generations of unmotivated individuals who feel that every entitlement program is a birthright and that participating in the republic is a colossal waste of time. This parallels the mindset of many inner city citizens across the United States.

You can only really know this city by actually walking down each street and speaking to as many individuals as possible. My shoes and pants are muddy from covering so much ground on foot and my mind resonates with echoes of the voices of people I spoke to today about exactly what they think about the government, the non-profits, the churches and businesses that determine the fate of their everyday lives. Despite the dreary commentary that many had to offer, there was an underlying hope that things have gotten better for the people of Elkhart and that it will only get better.

It sometimes is difficult to remember that the individuals in the poorer areas of the city aren't lazy, but uninspired. The hard work of many organizations in Elkhart are looking to address this and in my first day of exploring Elkhart's politics, I am ecstatic to find that this city in it's blacks, whites and everything in between are more fluid than most cities I've been to.