I have lived in Dallas 23 years and have watched in amazement as many inner-city neighborhoods have been revived from decline and near ruin.
For years, local newspapers, real estate developers, community leaders, police and public officials have urged Dallas folks to move to or remain in the inner-city; to rehabilitate the core of Dallas – the historic areas; and to keep the neighborhood schools, recreation centers, shopping districts, restaurants and churches vital and active.
Yet now DART, with its light-rail plans, and the City of Dallas seem to be sacrificing the health of these historic urban neighborhoods in their reach to the suburbs. DART is using our neighborhoods as a means to an end, and the City of Dallas is allowing it to happen. Such a policy has never been moral, just or right. Cities and their agencies have a choice of how to treat people, just as individuals do.
I hold weekly meetings in my home about the DART issue. My neighbors sometimes bring their children. Recently, as I held a neighbor’s 4-year-old during such a meeting, I realized with horror what a dreadful introduction to civic issues and Dallas politics she is receiving.
She is learning that to this City and to DART, values of safety, privacy, personal property and tranquility are expendable. She is learning that her parents’ elected officials place no value on the innate desire and need to protect one’s home and property from intrusion and damage. She is learning, through hearing us expose our frustration and fear, to feel that apathy and mistrust of the political process so fatal to our republic.
She could be learning such different things. She could be observing the roots of a regional transit system that would preserve and enhance the entire City by the time she reaches adulthood. She could be hearing of cooperation and mutual efforts to protect, not desecrate, neighborhoods. She could live in a future where DART could be something to be proud of. She could, when she was her own family, point to a DART train as a source of pride and a badge of community/agency/City cooperation.
Dallas never can achieve a great regional mass transit system by damaging and alienating its established inner-city neighborhoods and by building resentment each step of the way. DART, with its initial implementation of light rail, has shown us it can get light rail up and running. What remains to be seen is if DART can do it without damaging any neighborhood.
I urge the resident of the neighborhoods along the Northeast Corridor to not let complacency and apathetic naivete about DART’s plans for this line lead to our community’s decline. It is incumbent upon us to protect our homes.
It is beginning to be viewed as a fundamental right to live in a safe, private, quiet, secure environment. If we do not act now to protect our quality of life, it may soon be too late.
DART must be held to a high level of accountability for how it treats our neighborhoods.
DART must be called upon to change its ways and to treat residents with justice, fairness and honesty.
DART must remember who we are, some of the taxpayers who are funding this transit system with one penny of every dollar we spend in this City.
DART must pass honorably through our neighborhoods for us to applaud its journey.
