Connecticut
Catholic Conference
134
FARMINGTON AVENUE, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 06105
MARIE T. HILLIARD, PH.D, Executive Director
Telephone
(860)
Common Ground,
Common Good: Toward Greater Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice in
Connecticut.
April 1, 2003
Economic and social inequities have been growing among people and among towns and cities in Connecticut. Some have opportunities and are succeeding, while many are struggling. We have seen evidence of this through the ministry and service of our parishes, hospitals, and Catholic Charities agencies as they respond to the needs of the poor and to the challenges facing working families of every income level.
Our media regularly report on city problems. We may know less about the large challenges facing an increasing number of our suburbs, or the farming families who still are important to Connecticut’s economy and to preserving our landscape. What are the moral challenges within the economic and social issues of this time? Do our familiar structures of governance and taxation require adjustment to meet the needs of twenty-first century Connecticut? What must we do to provide for the common good, and to enable all Connecticut families to achieve a brighter future, whether they live in cities, suburbs, or rural areas, whatever their income, race or ethnicity? Though faced with diminishing resources, how do we redesign government to deliver its services more effectively to those in need?
To address these questions we need a comprehensive and accurate picture of where we are and where we might be headed. Connecticut Metropatterns, a study commissioned by the Office of Urban Affairs of the Archdiocese of Hartford, is a resource for understanding and planning our common future. Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce of the firm Ameregis created this report from publicly available information. The study presents social, economic and environmental realities, patterns and trends that affect the lives of everyone in Connecticut. It also suggests important new policy directions for our state. We believe the report and these recommendations have merit and deserve serious attention from state and local officials. We invite all Catholics and all citizens to learn what the report reveals, to consider these recommendations, and to contribute to the discussion that we hope will take place in every town hall, around every kitchen table, in every church, mosque and synagogue, in every chamber of commerce and union hall in our state.
What does Connecticut Metropatterns tell us? How are we to understand this information in moral terms? How should we respond as citizens, parishes, and communities?
As bishops, we ground our thinking in Catholic social doctrine, which begins with a profound concern for the life and dignity of the human person. Human life is sacred and every person is precious. The measure of every institution is whether it threatens or enhances the life and dignity of the human person. The person is not only sacred but social, so how we organize our society, in economics, in law and public policy, directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. The family is the central social institution that must be supported and strengthened. Our Catholic tradition teaches that human dignity can be respected, and a healthy community achieved, only if human rights are protected and responsibilities are met. Therefore, every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to the requirements for human decency. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities, to one another, to our families, and to the larger society. A basic moral test is how our most vulnerable members are faring. Our tradition calls us to put the needs of the poor and vulnerable first. This is not a new insight. It is the lesson of the parable of the Last Judgment. (Matthew. 25:31-46) The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way of making a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ brother or sister, wherever we live, for we are one human family, whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic, and ideological differences. We show our respect for our Creator by our stewardship of creation that cannot be separated from care of neighbor or from our responsibility to future generations. Protecting our air, water, land and other creatures is part of respecting life. [1]
How does this vision compare with what we see in our state? Connecticut Metropatterns shows that economic inequities and social separation are growing, and that our patterns of uncoordinated development are affecting our air, water, and land. The maps contained in this report show, graphically and geographically, that our suburban communities are not all alike. It is important to see and understand the differences. Cities and rural areas have something in common: for each to survive and thrive the current pattern of development must change. All communities will be negatively affected by allowing the current pattern of development to continue. The report points to the conclusion that we can and must do things differently by working together in regions and in the state as a whole, not just as a collection of 169 towns. Lack of cooperation is hurting everyone. More regional cooperation can benefit all.
In Connecticut Metropatterns we see that, while the population of Connecticut has grown by 12% between 1970 and 2000, our use of land has grown 102% during that same period. This is approximately nine times as fast as the growth in population whereas the national average is 2.5 times. People have moved out of the cities into former farm and forested land, seeking a certain vision of quality of life and good schools for their children. Some families achieve these goals. Towns with growing population and areas of new development, however, often lack the means to fund new schools, roads, and sewers. The numbers of children at or under the poverty level in schools outside the cities is growing. The tax base of cities and older suburbs is shrinking. Yet our cities and the suburbs closest to them are home to almost half of Connecticut’s population and there are greater demands on their shrinking resources to provide adequate schooling for children and other basic services.
Most new jobs are in the suburbs, but many job seekers live in cities without public transportation to reach those jobs. In many communities, there is a severe lack of affordable housing, not just for low-income families, but even for those of moderate income, including young and older adults. We are not developing homes, jobs and transportation together, in ways that will serve our long term economic, health and environmental interests.
Moreover we are changing the quality of our air and water in ways that are harmful to human health, as well as to the whole community of life that is God’s creation here in Connecticut. We are concentrating regional waste facilities in urban areas, often near existing power plants and major highways. As a result, air quality is affected, and low-income children, many of them African American or Hispanic, who reside nearby, suffer from high asthma rates. Air quality everywhere is affected by increased vehicle miles driven in our state. More workers have longer commutes and most drive to work alone, while development of new public transportation is rare. As more land is converted from forest and farmland to roads, commercial centers and housing, more rainfall runs off, carrying pollutants into our rivers and Long Island Sound, and less rainfall is penetrating back into the ground to replenish our water supplies.
Furthermore, we must confront racism if our state is to be one under God. Our brother, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, calls certain patterns of development “spatial racism.”[2] Spatial racism refers to patterns of metropolitan development in which some affluent whites create racially and economically segregated suburbs or gentrified areas of cities, leaving the poor -- mainly African Americans, Hispanics and some newly arrived immigrants -- isolated in deteriorating areas of the cities and older suburbs. This has devastating consequences for the poor, leaving many of them trapped in segregated neighborhoods with limited economic and educational opportunities. At the same time, financial resources are often drained from the neediest areas and redirected to creating sewer lines, roads and schools for those moving farther and farther away from cities and older suburbs. Everyone pays for this new development through state and especially federal taxes.
Change is possible. Our own state has made some positive steps. Other states are experimenting with ways of fixing similar problems.
Working for the common good means that our social, economic and governmental decisions, plans and policies contribute toward providing all people with the basic necessities for a decent life: living-wage jobs, transportation, housing, effective schools, and health care. Working for the common good also includes examining how we are affecting this wonderful part of God’s creation. It has too often been the case, as Pope John Paul II remarked, that we “have been making decisions, taking actions and assigning values that are leading us away from the world as it should be, away from the design of God for creation, away from all that is essential for a healthy planet and a healthy commonwealth of people. A new approach and a new culture are needed, based on the centrality of the human person within creation and inspired by environmentally ethical behavior….Such an ethic fosters interdependence and stresses the principle of universal solidarity, social justice and responsibility in order to promote a true culture of life.”[4]
We invite everyone to work for a better and more equitable future for all with increased opportunity for everyone. To advance this work, we have called together the CenterEdge Coalition, which already includes more than 45 faith communities, business, environmental, civic and civil rights groups, planning organizations, housing advocates and others. This coalition will use the CT Metropatterns report as the basis for an educational process, in which all are invited to join. The four Catholic Dioceses of Connecticut have already sponsored four CenterEdge conferences for our parishes, convened on a watershed basis, to highlight our common ground and water, precious to all of us.
We strongly encourage all Connecticut citizens to become informed. We urge Catholic parishes or deaneries, as well as local ecumenical and interfaith groups to host presentations about the information in this report. We urge every city and town to review the Connecticut Metropatterns report and to sponsor forums, library exhibits, and educational events of many kinds. We encourage newspapers, television and radio to bring this information to the citizenry.
In other states such as Michigan and Minnesota, taking on these challenges has led to economic growth and an improved quality of life for all. In the Catholic tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue. Participation in the political process is a moral obligation. We must take seriously the need to reflect, in light of our moral values, on issues of social, economic and environmental justice. Then we must act, as citizens of our towns and state, for public policies and practices that will lead to a life more in keeping with the transcendent dignity of every man, woman and child.
[1] Excerpts from "Sharing Catholic Social Teaching", U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1999 and “A Century of Social Teaching,” U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1991.
[2] Dwell in My Love: a Pastoral Letter on Racism, April 4, 2001 on the 33rd anniversary of the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)