Over the last seven days I have been at both my best and worst for the people of this county, and as a result I’ve been reminded what matters.
The relevant events are Governor Moore’s Inauguration Ceremony, my conflict with opponents of the Earl Conservation Center at Quiet Waters Retreat, the AACPS Inclusion and Acceptance Forum in response to a horrific bullying incident at Severna Park High School, and an email I just received.
You see, I got angry. My buttons got pushed, pushed by people who were angry. And it came right after a high.
The high was Wednesday’s inauguration of my friend Wes Moore as Maryland’s first African American Governor following an election in which he received more votes than any candidate for that office in our state’s history.
I served as the emcee, and I offered my own small contribution toward reconciliation by acknowledging history, my own family’s history, the fact that my great x 5 grandfather had arrived here 300 years ago, bought land, and made his fortune in the tobacco industry on the backs of enslaved men, women, and children from Africa. I shared for the first time publicly that his home was on the very ground where Wes Moore’s family would sleep that night, where Government House would later be built. Here’s the video, and here is the text of what I said.
I did that because I’ve learned that both Black and white Americans are yearning to heal from the scars left by slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, and voter suppression, and that sunshine heals. The response to my words was gratitude, from Wes, from Oprah, and from people across the political spectrum. All was well, I thought.
At the same time, community opposition was growing to a project I was very proud of, the Chesapeake Conservancy’s $10 million Earl Conservation Center for small nonprofits to offer meeting and educational programming space at a glorious waterfront site adjacent to Quiet Waters Park that we had protected from development. The opposition’s advocacy was effective and at times harsh. Conservancy Director Joel Dunn had told me he wanted to “meet them where they are,” and try to find a way forward, but the online attacks on him and his organization made that hard to envision. On Sunday night their board reluctantly voted to pull out of the project.
My reaction on Monday was different from the way I have governed. I was angry. My public statement focused on the opponents’ tactics. I wrote a very different version of this letter that I’ve since deleted, and I “went off” at a staff meeting that day.
As I drove that night to Severna Park High School, pondering the message I would share about inclusion and acceptance, it hit me. I was slipping. I could feel myself drifting off the path that had served me so well. I was seeing the conservation center opponents who had booed me off the stage at their meeting as the bad guys, the “I got mine and don’t want to share” group, rather than as individual people who were acting on the information in front of them with goals not that different from mine.
My message at the forum was to see each other as people. Superintendent Bedell said that perception is reality, and that’s what we have to deal with. A video that they showed was titled, “Show Up,” and told a story of a couple kids inviting their autistic and excluded classmate to trick-or-treat with them. I, like everyone in the theater, had an emotional reaction.
The next morning, I got an extraordinary email from one of the conservation center opponents. He said that he’d spoken against the project at the meeting I’d attended, but since, “come full circle.” He noted that nobody had explained the value of the conservation center, who would be using it, and how it would further the mission of environmental protection. He noted that my statement in support of the project hadn’t helped.
It seems that this county executive Showed Up for the Moore Inauguration, but did not Show Up for the community meeting that I attended for the conservation center.
Lesson learned, again.
Until next week,
Steuart Pittman
Anne Arundel County Executive