Essays From West of 98: Needing to Want to be From Here Part 2 2024
On being from a place and being willing to fight for it
Author’s note: this is Part 2 of an essay was originally published in early June 2023. Part 1 can be found here. I am re-publishing these essays in part to share with my new readers and in part because these thoughts are an important precursor to something new that is on my heart and mind. I hope that you enjoy this essay for the first time or on a re-reading, however it reaches you. I look forward to sharing with you the growth and expansion of these ideas.
📷: Stamford’s Oliver Elementary School, built by the WPA in 1939.
There’s an episode of the great sitcom Parks and Recreation called “Born and Raised.” In that episode, the champion of Pawnee, Indiana, Leslie Knope, discovers a disturbing fact: she wasn’t actually born in Pawnee. Even worse, she was born in the hideous neighboring town of Eagleton. Now, this is really something of a technicality. Her parents lived in Pawnee and she has lived there her entire life. She was only born in Eagleton due to a raccoon infestation at Pawnee’s hospital. It doesn’t matter. She was running for Pawnee City Council on a “born and raised” platform. The citizens are incensed by this scandal. She is dejected until perpetually peppy City Manager Chris Traeger tells her:
“Where you’re born is a piece of trivia. Where you’re from, that’s what makes you who you are.”
There is an important tie between being from a place and loving a place. Not everyone from a place will love the place, for reasons both internal and external, but truly loving a place usually requires a certain connection. There are exceptions. Magnificent wonders of the world like the Grand Canyon, Great Sand Dunes, and Denali can elicit love from all but the coldest of humans. When it comes to other places, connection is important to build love. I have an affinity for rural America at large, but I am from Stamford. I love Stamford more than similarly-situated rural towns.
Why does this matter? There is an adage that I have used before, that people will not fight for something they don’t love. Conversely, people WILL fight for what they DO love. We see this every day. Parents fight to protect their children. Spouses fight for one another and for their relationship. Indigenous tribes fight to defend their sacred lands. A people who are rooted in place and community will fight to ensure that the place is preserved for generations to come.
The most damaging aspect of uprooting the rural economy is the destruction of this connection between people and place. When a people are unable to prosper in a place and are set adrift by forces beyond their control, there is a breaking of the tie between people and place. It frays the love for that place and willingness to fight for it. The people may still have affinity for that place once they relocate, but the distance will always be a limiting factor.
Caesar Augustus knew the value of love for place. He oversaw a vast Roman Empire that stretched across Europe and North Africa. No level of forcible military occupation could force such a diverse people to be “glad” to participate in the Roman Empire. Not even a Caesar could forcibly impose upon his subjects the virtue and dignity of a shared life. Similarly, we cannot force pride upon our own citizens. Forced pride always fails spectacularly and it sometimes leads a culture through some dark and deeply immoral places before the failure.
It is far more meaningful and difficult to create real pride and real love for a place. This is what Caesar Augustus sought to do. It does not require a poet as skilled as Virgil to pen a transcendent local mythology (but if any aspirants are interested, hit me up). It requires a community’s leaders to recognize and value the dignity and honor of every one of our people. It requires all our local institutions—government, cultural, economic, and recreational—to serve and uplift both people and place. It requires us to ask ourselves tough questions like: why would someone want to move here if they aren’t like us? What about our friends and neighbors who grew up with different experiences in this place? What makes them want to be from here? What caused them to leave?
These are difficult questions without easy answers, but that is where good and meaningful work happens. Tough questions with easy solutions exist only in the fantasyland of political discourse and we see how successful that is.
As our high school seniors embark on their next phase of life, I hope that some of them want to be from here with the same manner of enthusiasm that Leslie Knope claimed Pawnee. I hope that our community leaders look both inward and outward and ask ourselves:
How we can create an environment where our people want to be from here? How do we inspire others to be willing to fight to make our place better for generations to come?
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found. Check out the West of 98 Bookstore with book lists for essential reads here.