To the editor:
“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” — Martin Luther King Jr.
Beneath all of the “sleepiness” ambience and the sense of “forgotten” charm, we all tend to get nostalgic about what our main streets used to look like. We remember our favorite diners, little mom-and-pop shops that lined both sides of the street, a pool hall and drive-in movie theaters. But what we don’t talk about is how or why all of that disappeared and never returned within the last 30 years.
The only real change that our little communities have seen is loss. Between the loss of manufacturing plants to small shops, I would argue that our small communities have seen more of the metaphorical “death” of Main Street more times than we can count, and yet we still cling to hope that it will change, which rarely comes.
I would even go so far as to say that many of our woes stem from really bad state policies designed to strip us of our resources and leave us with nothing for over two decades. And those policies have broken our “bootstraps” and are on the verge of making us completely “bootless,” especially if a few of the ballot initiatives like Amendments 4 and 5 pass. Yes, the hard data backs this statement up.
Which brings me to my next point, of why having representation is so important to the little communities. I would argue we haven’t had any real representation on the state level since the 1990s, and haven’t seen federal representation since Jo Ann Emerson was our U.S. representative, but I digress.
Between looking at voting records and the kind of legislation in Missouri legislative and congressional records, one tends to pick up on the patterns that voters’ interests are not the priority.
So, as this election cycle revs up for the general election for both state and federal seats, I beg of you to take the time to look up voting records and various pieces of legislation from the past four years to help you make an informed decision on the direction you want to see this area go. Because it’s time to get our bootstraps back so we can pull ourselves back up.
Jojo Stewart
Willow Springs
(Ed. Note: JoJo Stewart is a candidate for the 154th District in the Missouri House of Representatives).
