PRESS EDITORIAL: Lighting the way to a more diverse community

The City of Port Washington is known for its historic lighthouses, but last week its Common Council lit a different kind of beacon, one meant to lead people of this community and others to a safe harbor of understanding in stormy times.
    The sincere, thoughtful, open-minded dialogue between aldermen and citizens that took place at the Sept. 1 meeting of the council was a heartening counterpoint to the social warfare that rages in Wisconsin and many states and cities of America.
    The words spoken at City Hall were not about the infamous acts of police brutality against Black Americans that set off the conflict or the peaceful protests, rioting, vandalism and violence that resulted; they were about the root cause of the angst that grips the nation—racial injustice.
    Here are some of those words:
    “I think these are times that call for grace, compassion, empathy, understanding.”—Ald. Jonathan Pleitner.
    “This is so important to many of us, that our community is welcoming.”—citizen Louise Mollinger.
    “I want this city to take the lead and be a benchmark on diversity and inclusion. We as a community can do better and do more.”—Ald. Dan Benning.        
    “We have the power to change. We owe it to our neighbors of color.”—citizen Peter Vander Velden.
    The discussion was inspired by Benning’s proposal that the council create a task force to review and modify city government practices to encourage inclusion and diversity.
    The proposal was supported by other council members and Mayor Marty Becker.
    Like small towns all over the Midwest, Port Washington doesn’t have much experience with racial diversity. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that in 2017 the city’s population was 93.7% white.
    The city was awakened to the racial justice issue when several of the many demonstrations organized in American cities by the Black Lives Matter movement were held in Port Washington. Those events, which were attended by a number of city residents sympathetic to the BLM cause as well as people from other places in Wisconsin, were peaceful, though a specter of violence haunted a rally in Veterans Park when a group of counter protestors came armed with semi-automatic rifles of the same AR-15 type used by a teenager to kill protestors in Kenosha in August.
    A few overt acts of racism have been reported in Port Washington, and these, of course, are intolerable stains on the community. But instances of people of color being made to feel unwelcome are more common, and it is this racial insensitivity and resistance to diversity that prompted that exceptional meeting of the minds at the council meeting.
    The whiteness of Port Washington is mostly a demographic accident. The city has a history of having a robustly diverse population—not racially diverse, but culturally and ethnically diverse. Members of that population in the last century would have likely been moved to laughter if anyone suggested they were the beneficiaries of white privilege.
    Port Washington was the bluest of blue-collar communities and, far from being privileged, most of its residents worked at factory jobs to lift their families just over the middle-class threshold.
    By descent, they were German, Slovenian, Luxembourger, Italian, Polish and Irish, but all proudly American at a time when immigration was not feared, as it is by many today, but celebrated as the source of this country’s vigorous can-do spirit.
    The ethnic and cultural mix that nurtured the growth Port Washington is part of its history, but now the time is overdue for the community to empower a new vitality by encouraging racial diversity.
    The sentiments expressed at that remarkable council meeting last week lit the way. We should all follow that light.