But I do remember the prosperity of Allentown. The factories were going full tilt, some with two and three shifts. More mothers were staying home, with the father's union wages being enough to support the family. The southside was booming, with new factories between Lehigh Street and Emmaus Ave. Mack 5C was putting out an endless line of truck cabs.
I was about fifty years away from thinking about local politics. I couldn't tell you who the mayor was until Joe Daddona in the late 70's. We're learning that Ed Zucal is asking Republicans to write him in on May 20th, and that Matt Tuerk and Dems are in a huff about it.
Although conservative, I'm a true independent. By that I mean that I vote for people, not a party. There hasn't been a Republican voted to any Allentown office this century, but a shakeup sure wouldn't hurt the town. When nobody from the Baum Art School, which just started building a new addition, doesn't complain about the Museum moving away to 10th Street, we have become mired in go along to get along. It is my contempt for that attitude which fuels this blog.
Maybe the Baum School is in on the deal?
ReplyDeleteOf course the Baum School is already in the mix.
Deleteanons@5:32%6:24: The Baum School is just breaking ground on a new addition....It is hard to believe that they would be expanding on their limited parcel, being "in the mix".
ReplyDeleteBaum might not be directly in the mix, but they’ve likely been promised some sort of additional grant or funding (or other perk) to keep quiet.
DeleteAnd that’s really the heart of the problem, isn’t it?
We no longer have institutions that are independent from government influence and willing to stand up to bad ideas coming from those in government. Instead of making their case to individuals and the community they supposedly served, our non-profits have accepted an ever-increasing share of funding from the government in return for their silence.
I understand that it’s much easier for non-profits to sell-out and convince a few elected officials to throw a few hundred thousand their way than it is to earn that funding by making their case to the actual public. Unfortunately, it’s also what undermines a non-profit’s connection to the public and leads to their eventual downfall.
The art museum hasn’t made any big announcements since dropping the bomb about moving. I’m sure the current director received an ear full of criticism from those who donated to the recent expansion and any folks who donated heavily over the past two decades. The art museum and Baum really don’t communicate well. It’s two very different groups of people.
ReplyDeleteI’ll try to keep this as non-partisan as possible.
ReplyDeleteI don’t know if republicans actually ruled Allentown in the 1950’s, but I do know that as late as the 1990’s you could find people in office and running for office that focused on what was best for the city as a whole, not for individual segments of society within the city. There were candidates and office holders from both parties, and more importantly voters in the city looked beyond partisan labels to the actual policies that candidates supported when deciding who to vote for.
The big change, at least in my lifetime, was with the first campaign of Ed Pawlowski, who brought the hyper-partisanship that was exploding at the national level to Allentown city politics. Unfortunately, that hyper-partisanship also brought the same policies that had harmed our larger cities, and which have continued to fail time and again.
Sprinkle in the transiency of many who were coming into Allentown after fleeing those nearby large cities - yet still voting according to blind party allegiance - and you get to where Allentown today is, electorally.
I don’t believe that any one party has a lock on good ideas, and Allentown certainly needs some good (or at least better) ideas to get out of the hole that has been dug there. Unfortunately our current mayor does not seem to have a similarly inclusive viewpoint.
I think Allentown has suffered greatly over the last two decades because of a lack of diversity. Not diversity of skin color, religion, gender, etc, but from intellectual diversity (or diversity of opinion). We’ve fallen into an echo chamber of bad ideas that has caused Allentown to fall to the least desirable of the Valley’s three major cities. The last four years have continued that downward trajectory.
I applaud Ed Zucal for reaching out, talking to, and trying to consistently earn the votes of democrats, republicans, and independents. To me, that’s something that every candidate should be doing, and not just at election time.
@11:23 Allentown has suffered indeed. However you are missing both the causes and the time frame. Diversity is a minor issue actually..
DeleteTo give you some historical context, the politics of Allentown over the past 70 years, since 1955 has been largely bipartisan until around 2000. Two men back then, Brighton Diefenderfer, a Republican, and Donald Hock, a Democrat were mayor back in the 1950s,, although they kind of switched with each other at election time. The city was governed differently as well. City council was much smaller and both men served on it as deparment heads The mayor was still on the council however it was a seperate elected office. It was called the "Comission" form of government, rather than the "Strong Mayor" form Allentown has today.
Everyone in positions of civic responsibility were either from Allentown or from the area and were very familiar with the city and the issues facing it. The ASD was the same basicaly, people who either were educated in the ASD or in the area, and there was a stability of leadership there as well and school supeintendents were not changed every few years or brought into the ASD from other states like today.
Taxes were reasonable then as well, as the city had large industrial bases to finance the much smaller city government. Graduates of Allentown (later William Allen) and Dieruff could generally find good-paying jobs here also in the local area. Poverty and crime, although not unknown, were minor issues compared to what they are today.
In the early 1960s, Allentown in fact had one of its greatest mayors, John T Gross who was a Democrat, but was also respected by the Republicans also. You can still see traces of Mayor Gross today in Allentown as he was the one who first initiated the changes on Hamilton Street and the Hamilton Mall project that was finished a decade later. Throughout the 1960s Allentown did not suffer from the unrest in other larger cities by issues such as civil rights, or Vietnam because city welcomed all people. This is the time when I went through the ASD and saw my first minorities in my classes as well. There really was no aminosity as we saw them as just other kids in our classes. That was the limit really of our "social engineering", well that and the "new math" of the time, teaching things like set theory.
What really changed Allentown was our change in municipal government in 1970 when the "strong-mayor" system came into being and instead of a shared form of leadership between various city counil heads and the mayor, the mayor became the chief excutive of the city and the poweor of city council was greatly reduced to bassiclly the advisory positon it has now. It was because of this, the mayor had the ability to start to play politics in a manner unknown before. Joe Daddona, who was mayor for many years with powers far greater than what previous Allentown mayors had, began to re-engineer the city and the poverty began to increase, as the number of Demoratic voters was increased due to his policies. Also this is when Allentown began to lose its commercial and industrial base and in the last quarter of the 20th century, began to suffer from many of the same ills that other larger cities began to suffer from. With the incrasing of povety levels, came the crime. Also this is when the exits to the townsips began as well.
By 2000, Allentown had changed significantly over the All-America city one of 1975. And poor leadership in the first quarter of the 21st century have not made it any better.
This post was meant as non-partisan. It started with the 1955 campaign ruler, and the title was a play on words. Allentown's prosperity in 1955 wasn't related to Republican rule, but an extension of the post war economy.
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