Independence Day
I should preface my comments again with a disclaimer—these are just my personal opinions, and I don’t want to speak for anyone who may differ with my view. If you’re a vendor at the market and you would like to differ with my opinions or offer your own, I encourage you to contact me. If you’re a member of the Arlington County Government or of the Clarendon Alliance it would certainly be interesting to get your feedback.
Having said that, and with an acknowledgment that I haven’t gone into the full story of the Courthouse Markets and their long relationship with the Clarendon Alliance and the Arlington County Government yet—and with a promise to detail that history soon—I’ll press on.
I think all of the regular vendors at these markets would agree that the Clarendon Alliance, which holds the permits and which is tasked with promoting and supporting the markets, hasn’t done anything for us in the past five or six years. Whether they ever adequately promoted or supported the markets is debatable.
I think most of the regular vendors would also agree that the Arlington County Government hasn’t helped us in trying to hold the Clarendon Alliance accountable for their negligence and indifference. Vendors have repeatedly contacted Mary Hynes, Jay Fisette, other members of the County Board and the County Manager, Ron Carlee.
We have been promised change, have had numerous meetings with various representatives of the County Government and with Susan Anderson and Greg Cahill, the Executive Director and President of the Clarendon Alliance respectively. Not only has there been no progress, the markets have declined. As I’ve written here lately, the Clarendon Alliance has even canceled one of the markets, effectively halving the income of anyone who relies on them for a livelihood.
At one point in the past, a proposal was drafted and presented to the Alliance and the County Government that would have allowed the markets to be managed by vendors, and would have allowed the rent collected from the vendors to be used for advertising and other needs of the market (which, really, should have been what those funds were used for anyway). The proposal was rejected, as I have been told by Susan Anderson, unread.
The vendors have half-jokingly used the phrase “taxation without representation” in discussing the odd limbo in which the markets existed—caught between an absentee landlord that would neither adequately manage and promote the market and a County government that would not allow anyone else to step in. And here it is, July 4t, the Saturday before the first “no market” Sunday we will have.
As corny as it sounds, I was re-reading some of the more important American historical documents this evening—the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address— and had to pause when I hit the Declaration of Independence. To compare our little market with the founding of this country would be ridiculous, but it’s especially ironic that in a state with the motto “thus be it always to tyrants” on its flag, we citizens of this free republic are experiencing in microcosm the same kind of complaints that inspired the Founding Fathers to draft the following:
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
All that we have been looking for in the market is for adequate governance by a body acting on behalf of and in the best interests of the community and the vendors. Instead, the Clarendon Alliance collects rents from the market every weekend and has to date done nothing with those rents that could be said to benefit the markets in any way. The County Government continues to allow this state of affairs despite proof being provided to them repeatedly of the Clarendon Alliance’s incompetence and disinterest. Now that the Sunday market has failed to secure a profit for the Clarendon Alliance, they’ve abandoned it—and again, the County not only allows it, but apparently condones the behavior, choosing to spring it on us at the very end of an hour-long meeting one week before the final market day.
It is this sort of behavior that motivates those of us among the vendors who want to see the markets under the control of a competent and engaged organization. To borrow phrases from the Declaration of Independence, we want to “dissolve the Political Bands which have connected” us with an entity like the Clarendon Alliance, which has long been responsible for “imposing taxes on us without our Consent,” and lately been responsible for “cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World,” two of the complaints the signers of the Declaration of Independence addressed to the tyrant George III in the summer of 1776.
Again, to compare these markets, as small as they are and as trivial as they may seem, to the founding of this nation is perhaps a bit silly. But again, it is especially ironic and more than a little sad that we find ourselves without meaningful recourse from our elected officials in the state that Jefferson made his home, and with complaints that would I think be at least somewhat familiar to him.
Happy 4th of July.
