The other day, I went into my local branch of Chase Bank. It moved recently to a new location, not far from the previous location in Seattle’s University District. The bank had to move because its previous location will be the site of a station on the wonderful new light-rail line. The light rail’s wonderfulness is somewhat compromised by the fact that we should have built it 20 years ago, but that’s a different story.
Actually, it’s not really a different story at all. The light rail’s single line runs from downtown Seattle to the airport, south of the city. Unfortunately for me, I live north of downtown, so the light rail won’t be of much use to me until the U District stations at Husky Stadium and 45th & Brooklyn (where the bank used to be) are opened, and that’s supposed to be some five years or more from now. Until then, my wife will (I hope) continue driving me to and from the airport for the many trips out of town that my work requires. She loves me and supports my work and usually doesn’t complain, but we’ll both be happier when I can conveniently get to the airport and back by light rail.
But will that day in fact come? Put differently, under what conditions will I be doing my work five years from now? Do we – specifically in this case the citizens and leaders of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, but more generally American society as a whole – have either the money or the funds of collective optimism and shared purpose that are required to follow through on such a project? I hope we do, but these days the question is always in the back of my mind.
If we had built the light rail 20 years ago, when Seattle was in the midst of a Microsoft-led tech boom, not only would it have been a lot less expensive to build, but the public would have been making use of it all this time, burning much less gasoline in automobiles and contributing less to global warming. But Microsoft Corporation and its reactionary enablers on what we call the Eastside – the mostly Republican-voting suburbs east of Lake Washington, where Microsoft world headquarters is located – have undermined all efforts to build adequate public transit for the Seattle area.
Now, finally, we have one light-rail line that doesn’t yet serve either the suburbs or my neighborhood. Is it too little, too late? The question is a microcosmic version of one that now looms over America as a whole. Microsoft made a definitive statement (or rather gesture, with its middle finger) regarding where it stands, three or four years ago when it built a massive parking garage right where a light rail station should be. To consider that Microsoft is the General Motors of our time, and to ponder the condition in which GM and the other car companies left the city of Detroit, is to see in a new light the once-proverbial saying “What’s good for General Motors is good for America.” Indeed I tremble for my country, just as Thomas Jefferson did way back when, as well as for my city.
What does all this have to do with my visit to the bank? Well, I happened to have business there just as the “Occupy” people were calling for us to “Make Wall Street Pay” by moving our accounts from the few remaining big national banks like Chase to local credit unions. I’m sympathetic to the idea, and I’ve been keeping a close eye on the banks and considering options, up to and including stashing Confederate dollars under a mattress. Given how unstable the American economy and political system have become, and how severely our trust has been violated, who’s to say anyone’s money is safe anywhere?
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