It worked. At least, it seems to have worked. Like economic development, our understanding of violence prevention remains primitive, partly because so many overlapping causes are at play. It almost resembles the state of medicine in the nineteenth century: finally advanced enough to do more good than harm, but only barely and not always. Still, I believe that it has made a difference. Shootings began to rise again in 2016 and 2017, but data from the program suggested it might have been higher otherwise. And the whole thing would have been worth it just to get the relationships built among the working group that still meets quarterly to oversee the strategy’s implementation. At count less tense moments for the community, we’ve been well served by having that team—a federal prosecutor, a minority pastor, a young analyst, an ex-offender specializing in street outreach, and a dozen others—accustomed to working together, with each other’s cell phone numbers when we need them.
We had hit on a policy that I believed in. But finding an approach as a policymaker did not relieve me of my duties as a symbol. What I saw, beginning on that sad summer morning, is that policy and symbolism cannot be decoupled. As a manager, a mayor must focus on what can be measured and proven, difficult decisions, and the use of new and old tools to solve important problems. But as a leader, sometimes the most important thing is simply to show up, or to gather the right people together, to send a certain kind of message. And while the mayor is the chief executive for the city as an administration, it is no less important to be, as the legendary Indianapolis mayor Bill Hudnut once said, “the celebrator, and sometimes the mourner, to the city as community.”
PERHAPS THE DEPTH OF SORROW we sometimes feel as mourners is what makes us best appreciate the value of celebration. When you inhale the spirit of a city on both its best and worst days, you find yourself swelling up with joy at events that a younger self might have found banal—the first pitch of a baseball game, the turn of a ceremonial shovel at a groundbreaking, the handing out of an award plaque. Introvert that I am, I even came to love a good parade.
In a way, a parade more than anything symbolizes this mode of mayorcraft. My parade style is to begin alongside the “City of South Bend” entry, with as many city employees and interns as we can muster carrying a banner and passing out candy, but then I inevitably fall behind them as I go along the curb to shake as many hands as possible—and then sprint to catch up to my group before doing the whole thing again. I will meet hundreds of people but have no actual conversations. The younger me would have dreaded the idea of so many interactions without substance. As I trot by and stick out my hand, I have little to say beyond, “Good morning!” or “Happy St. Patrick’s Day!” or “Nice work finding this spot to sit in the shade!”
Even though it is superficial and brief, there is meaning to each encounter. The purpose of the contact is not to persuade, problem-solve, or convey information. That can wait for a Mayor’s Night Out, a State of the City speech, a council meeting, or an exchange of letters. This is about being present, on behalf of the city, not as an individual who may have something in particular to offer, but as a mayor whose role is to embody the community.
CEREMONIES AND SYMBOLS ALSO SERVE to express the values of a community, and perhaps this is why I should not have been so surprised by the degree of controversy aroused by the naming of things. The renaming of a post office is sometimes used as a stock example of how Congress wastes its time when it could be doing something more important. But I learned through experience that the renaming of a street could be as significant as any piece of legislation.
For as long as I could remember—but in reality, only since 2005—our city had a street on the West Side named after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This drive bearing his name extended less than a mile, and some residents pointed out that not one building actually had MLK Drive as its address. From time to time, someone would come to the open-mic portion of a council meeting and argue that the naming ought to be extended to a longer stretch of the road, or applied to a different and more prominent street. It made sense to me; especially compelling was the idea of making sure it was a street with a bus route, given the significance of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, so that a bus could be seen in South Bend with Dr. King’s name over its windshield.
It turns out that one of the few unilateral, unchecked powers that an Indiana mayor has is to rename a street through a city Board of Public Works, so it seemed like I could just uncap my blue pen and take care of the issue. But I also knew to make sure that the choice had some community support, so I worked with our council to set up a volunteer committee of respected local residents to gather feedback and make suggestions. Then came the opposition, surprisingly fierce on the part of some. A remarkable number of reasons were presented to the committee why it couldn’t be this street, or that street. Some complained about the loss of history if an old name was removed to make room for MLK. Others spoke of the cost to businesses of changing their addresses. Some warned of a loss in land values.
Of course, racial tension lurked near the surface of almost all these conversations. But it was always offstage, something you could feel but not point out, shading the discussion through vague allusions to “desirability” or “history.” Looking for guidance and precedent, I learned that thousands of pages have been written on the topic, ranging from books with titles as straightforward as Along Martin Luther King: Travels on Black America’s Main Street to academic articles as esoteric as “Street Naming and the Politics of Belonging: Spatial Injustices in the Toponymic Commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.”
Every idea I floated for such “toponymic commemoration” met a new angle of resistance. Lincoln Way West drew opposition because it was a historic highway. Extending the existing route along Chapin Street was opposed out of regard for the historic neighborhood and the city father, Horatio Chapin, for whom it was named. (The Tribune recounted a 1995 debate on the same topic: “One lady said, ‘Martin Luther King Jr. is dead.’ And we said, ‘Well, we’re pretty sure Mr. Chapin is dead, too.’ ”) People living in that area hired a lawyer who went so far as to say that it would be illegal for me to rename the street there on the advice of the committee, because the city clerk had forgotten to advertise a couple of the committee meetings as required. A lady from that area came to a Mayor’s Night Out event and suggested, fire in her eyes, that North Shore Drive, where I lived, should be considered. I was about to tell her that that was fine by me, though I didn’t think the community activists would find it prominent enough; but by the time I had the sentence formed in my head, I was looking at her backside as she stomped off, apparently satisfied that she had proven her point with an outrageous suggestion.