Walt Meares
Once upon a time a beautiful city lay at the junction of two mountain
ranges, it was the gateway to the great valley. Thousands of people lived
there. They prospered and were well satisfied with their lives.
The city grew and changed. One day, the city's biggest employer left
for another city in a different state where the senators were friendlier
to their aerospace products. Oh, what wailing and weeping and carrying on
then occurred. The establishment said the fiscal sky would fall, and then
the local media businesses entered a time of explosive growth. There were
new jobs, more buildings, and lots of traffic to the city's malls and
theaters.
In the Hall of Governance, the establishment's five masters of
governance congratulated themselves on their collective acumen in
bringing the media business boom to pass. They increased apartment
density, declared parts of the city blighted, and then declared them
redevelopment zones (which let the city keep all that new property tax
money at home). And they allowed new businesses and apartments to have
fewer parking spaces than the zoning codes required.
They spent much time in the plush offices of the local captains of
industry. Networking with the mighty was, after all, a perk of the job,
and it created relationships that eased approval of business expansion
projects.
Indeed, so omniscient had these masters of governance become that they
limited the topics the people could address and the time each person
could speak during those periods when the masters of governance were
compelled by higher law to hear the appeals of the people. They referred
these appeals to staff.
And the appeals went for naught because staff, most of whom lived
outside the city and so had no personal interest in its quality of life,
usually had higher priority work. And so it was that the masters of
governance rebuffed people who appealed to them.
For a long time, the local newspaper reported these events as straight
news. As the city grew economically robust, the paper began to support
the rebuffed minority. Gradually, the cadre of "little people," as they
called themselves, grew stronger and opened the battle to overcome the
tyranny of the establishment.
One by one, the pillars of establishment power in the Hall of
Governance were defeated or chose to retire. One glorious day, the
neglected little people held a majority of the seats of governance. They
had elected a whole new group of masters.
