If Jamil Ragland is not on the radar of those in City Hall, he should be.

Hardly a day goes by anymore when I don’t hear someone say that the City of Hartford leadership has “no vision.” Well, folks…here’s your vision.

When I asked Ragland where he wanted to go to chat, he picked a coffee shop in Downtown, saying there was no place in his Northeast neighborhood to really meet up. On a day when rain threatened, he pointed out the lack of places one can go that do not require buying something.

The alternative? That was possibly the only thing not discussed when we met.

The College Experience

Ragland, a recent graduate of Trinity College with a degree in American Studies, said “Hartford is part of me and I’m part of Hartford.”

Attending an elite college while living in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods teaches its own lessons. “These worlds do not intersect at all,” he said.

He described this part of his college experience as going to class, work, and then home. “It was a lesson on how social class divides people,” he said matter-of-factly.

“There are people who have no incentive to understand what it is to be a black man,to have a kid, to be poor.”

Going onto that campus meant meeting rich people. Ragland said, “not ghetto rich, but real rich.”

The fuss over Trinity’s threats to drop Greek Life? Ragland perceived that as people upset because the pipeline they assumed they would be part of for elite networking, that could go away.

None of this was said with bitterness, but Ragland had less patience for the response to the assault that happened in March 2012.

That was the “perfect example of how people perceive Hartford despite the facts.”

For those who do not know, a Trinity College student was attacked off campus by several individuals. Initially, Trinity College officials allowed information to circulate which described the attackers as Hispanic males. Sources at various levels of employment within the college have indicated that within 24 hours, it was known that this was not the case at all. Instead of officially apologizing to the community, “what was allowed to persist is that Hartford is not safe.”

Living in the part of town that some news outlets only venture into for crime reporting, one might think that Ragland would have violence at the front of his mind, but during our lengthy conversation, the only time it emerged was in discussion of Trinity College.

Employment, housing, and making Hartford better was what he wanted to talk about.

City Revitalization

It’s hard to find work in Hartford, he said. In all the plans and projects for city revitalization, the question is asked about how to attract young people here. Ragland thought it would be more useful to ask, “how do we make the people already here more successful?”

“If everyone who can leave does,” he said, “that’s why it is how it is.” Ragland said, “if you can’t take care of home first,” you aren’t going to see improvements.

“My real dream for Hartford is to have it be a cultural and arts hub,” he said.

Instead of competing with other towns to attract retail customers, he suggested that Hartford” offer an alternative to West Hartford and Avon.”

The public ice rink in Bushnell Park was one thing he saw the City doing well. It was free to use the rink and to rent skates, making this an accessible activity for all, particularly those who have never tried ice skating before. Rich and poor, urban and suburban would skate all on the same rink. Those with more means, he said, might then go and spend some money at a restaurant downtown.

But what about the rest of the year?

Ragland said a perennial issue is how leadership continuously caters to “the people who don’t actually live here,” either directly or by helping businesses that are not a good fit in certain locations. The overpriced Market at Hartford 21 was one example he named. At the same time, he said, people need to expand their thinking about what can work where. There are countless barber shops and nail salons in the neighborhoods. Ragland asked, “why can’t there be a coffee shop in the north end?”

Barriers

We talked about barriers to understanding, whether these were in the form of constant headphone-wearing or the tone-deafness of certain initiatives.

At the recent Quality of Life Initiative Launch, Ragland suggested that one of the handouts came across as the Ten Commandments. This is a document given to the police which lists infractions and punishments. In our meeting, he elaborated on his concern.

It’s not that the littering and noise should go unchecked, he said, but the delivery of the message could have been done better. He spoke about his own experience cleaning up in front of his apartment building. One day he swept in the morning. Then again. Then once more that day. It’s discouraging to those who are trying to see people undo the work they have just done. He spoke to witnessing someone throw trash out the car window just a few feet before a garbage can that they were going to pass. Sometimes there is laziness involved, sometimes a lack of trash receptacles, but Ragland said that littering, and some of these other quality of life issues, exist because of a “lack of community ownership.” People are constantly reminded that they are just renting, just borrowing, he said. There is “no moral connection to the environment.”

Why should people care about a place they have learned to regard as temporary?

When we meet at a coffee shop, we are, for the price of an iced tea, borrowing space in which to sit.

In a way, “it’s like a privatization agenda,” Ragland said.

There aren’t many benches, even, on which to sit, he said.

It’s true. Most benches are at bus shelters or are within parks.

That’s one way of increasing that sense of communal ownership and increasing connectivity between the parks– let people know it is okay to sit down in their own city.

Next

Ragland, having graduated only in 2013, said he is looking for work and is especially interested in doing advocacy work at the policy level in the field of education. He has been published in the Hartford Courant, and says he is trying to write more. One of the positive things he gleaned from his education at Trinity, besides learning to call himself a feminist, is work on a novella. He said he is also working on co-authoring a piece about sexism in video games.

He says he would “prefer to stay in Hartford.”