Some evenings you can find my wife taking a walk or run around our neighborhood’s L.A. Wise Park. She’ll often run into a neighbor or two and visit a spell, and during most trips, she’ll also spend some time picking up trash – not the kind that happened to have blown in, but rather trash that was typically dumped out of the trash barrels – most likely by kids who feel a need to misbehave.
Sometimes there are kids sitting in the new pavilion and on occasion, she will encourage them to help pick up the trash. Usually they don’t, and sometimes she has to deal with verbal abuse at the suggestion, with the predictable justifications for doing nothing, “Well, I didn’t put it there!” or “It’s not MY job!” One night recently, after getting a curse-laden tongue lashing from a girl, she told the girl to just forget it and finished picking up the trash. As she started to move on with her walk, to her surprise, a boy who was with the girl told my wife, “No, we need to hear it.” I guess deep down, he knew what the girl did was wrong and that he and the other kids need direction – even if they choose (at least at the moment) to sit on the sidelines. We’ll never really know, but it might be that incident will end up being life-changing for that boy … and maybe the girl, too.
A couple of nights ago, on her walk, my wife told me about running into a neighbor who asked, “What is the Bissett Neighborhood Association for?” She felt she didn’t articulate a good answer and asked if I might talk to the neighbor sometime. That’s what this article is about. Seems to me, neighborhood associations are “for” a lot of things, but the one common denominator, is that NAs tend to be comprised of those who would pick up that trash and encourage others to do the same, even though it’s not their “job.”
Sometimes the “trash” is just that in a city park or on the street (I know of a woman in Woodland Heights who quietly and routinely walks around a couple of blocks picking up litter). Sometimes the cleanup is mowing the yard of a neighbor who has fallen on ill health. Sometimes it might be nuisance noise, problem properties or crime that get cleaned up in part via the NA’s efforts to engage a PAR officer or other City official about the issues.
Sometimes it is about the proactive avoidance of problems by hosting speakers at meetings talking about health, wellness or other topics. Sometimes it is about the myriad of social ills avoided when neighbors get to know each other better and learn about all sorts of services available to them at a Neighborhood Night Out or other social event. NAs are also gaining more and more experience working together and learning together to make things better across the City. The current neighborhood efforts related to the City’s Forward SGF 2040 Comprehensive Plan process is certainly gaining a front and center position in this regard.
So what’s the Bissett Neighborhood Association for? I guess maybe it is a lot of things. If you are someone who understands that our neighborhood is made better by those who work to improve it even though it’s not their job, maybe participating is for you. What exactly, precisely does it do? Well, I guess that depends on where the needs are, and those things are identified by the NA participants.
So if you see a need and are willing to help make things better, c’mon out to a meeting or event. The next one is Tuesday, Nov. 12 at 6:30 pm at Bissett Elementary. We’ll be talking about needs and activities for 2020 in our neighborhood. Maybe you have some thoughts to share, and maybe, just maybe, we’ll make a difference together.