PEOPLE FIRST
We Long for a City Where We Go Hard on the Issues and Easy on the People Acrowd-sourced BY KATE P. FITZPATRICK, ICMA-CM poem from those in local I am often inspired by stories on NPR. It’s a family joke, as I start virtually government every conversation with the phrase, “I heard on NPR today….” Last year, Morning Edition resident poet Kwame Alexander and host Rachel Martin proposed writing about the their way out of the unprecedented events of the past year to imagine a better Their crowdsourced poem, “This Is Our Dream,” was created from 2,500 communitieswe future. listener responses. My favorite line from the poem goes like this: “I dream a world where a bridge is aspiretohave. 1
KATE P. FITZPATRICK, ICMA-CM, istownmanager of Needham, Massachusetts. She is the recipient of an ICMA Community PartnershipAward.
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arching over troubled waters, built on a foundation of truth. Where children grow up learning only one kind of division, the long kind.” A poem about hope and promise, and yet also a joke about math. Perfect. This gave me the idea to create a crowdsourced poem about our cities and towns. Heaven knows we could use some hope for the future. My goal was to create an aspirational poem—not one about what we like, or what we wish for, but what we long for. The choice of the verb “long” is intentional and is defined as feeling “a strong desire or craving, especially for something not likely to be attained” (Merriam Webster). Not likely, but still possible. A sense of longing conjures a more aspirational lens. I put the call out through my personal blog, my state association, various ICMA committees that I belong to, ICMA Connect, LinkedIn, Twitter, our regional chamber of commerce, and people I have met over the years. I was thrilled by the variety of thoughtful responses that I received. This poem is the start of a conversation, not the end. Now that we know what we long for, we need to get busy building it.
