Opinion: Open Letter to Bartolotta

Submitted by Richard Mackin.
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An Open Letter to Mary Bartolotta ,

I want to start by acknowledging that I don’t think you should be mayor.

Nothing I have see or heard about you suggests that you care about all of the residents of Middletown. I am frustrated by your unwillingness to meet with the citizens of Middletown in public forums and your inability to answer questions put to you on public online forums. If there was any doubt in my mind, you calling me “Rick” when my name was properly spelled right above where you were typing sealed the deal.

I understand that you might not be comfortable with social media, but in 2019, that’s a major aspect of society, and if you in any way seek to direct the outcome of the future, you need to be willing to understand the present. In any case, if you can’t or won’t engage with people, you need to have an assistant who can. If you are unable to have a competent staff, well, maybe you should not be a mayor.

One of the major issues that has marked your campaign is that your husband has chosen to make public online posts, which, while others have said they were hateful and bigoted in various ways, I will note that they neither show good judgment nor a basic sense of decency. In any case, they do not instill a sense that he is interested in protecting people who are not conservative hetero-normative Americans, and I am suspect that his definition of “American” is as broad as mine.

I understand that your husband is a different human than you are, and that each human has different values, but you have chosen to make someone who made those choices your life partner. If you don’t share his values, why are you married? Furthermore, I understand that every American has the right to free expression, no matter how ugly the things they express are. That said, every human also has responsibility to care and nurture other humans. People who choose careers that are, in theory, rooted in the idea of “serving and protecting” the citizenry have further levels of responsibility to, well, serve and protect citizens.

It should go without saying that this is several levels past “don’t publicly mock them.” When provided with the chance to denounce these posts, your response didn’t suggest that you understood how they could possibly be deemed upsetting to anyone, so much as that you seemed frustrated that you had to deal with the situation.

In any situation involving politics, people will disagree with one another. I don’t ever expect to live in a situation where I agree with any choice an elected leader makes.

When I lived in Portland, OR, I felt close enough to then mayor Sam Adams that when we met at an event, we hugged. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t write him the occasionally strongly worded email. But it did mean that when I did, he responded in ways that made me aware that even if he disagreed with me, he heard me. Perhaps more important, he was WILLING to hear me.

When I asked you a series of questions about how you plan on working to ensure all residents of the city felt safe and secure, your response was a sort of blow-off...in which you spelled my name wrong. How did you think that exchange went?

Do you really WANT to be in charge of the city? Or does it just seem like a nice job because it means you are important? When a would-be constituent reaches out to you, are you pleased to see civic engagement, or are you frustrated that you have to DO something. My experience with you strongly suggests the latter.

There are several reasons why I asked you on Facebook what you are doing to ensure the safety and well-being of all Middletown residents. One is because you have chosen to self-select your public appearances, so I could not ask these things personally. I don’t know how much you understand about marketing, advertising, and branding, but I’ve worked in these fields. If people don’t feel like they can communicate with you, they find ways to communicate about you. The latter road tends to involve less flattering comments.

The other reason I asked you about safety and security comes back to your husband’s posts and your passive defense of them. Your eventual response was:

“Establishing a community review board for incidents involving the police. This is an issue that I have been pursuing in close coordination with Rep Quentin Phipps over the past couple of years. Middletown can be proactive on this issue by being a leader on community policing and building a healthier and sustainable dialogue between our police and our residents. Accessibility and transparency are crucial in building a stronger relationship based communication and trust.” 

There’s a lot to unpack there.

“Establishing a community review board for incidents involving the police.” You do understand that “wait until an incident that involves police to happen, then review it” isn’t making going to make people feel safe. Imagine if a restaurant advertised “Come eat here, we have doctors on hand in case you get sick.”

“Middletown can be proactive on this issue by being a leader on community policing and building a healthier and sustainable dialogue between our police and our residents.” Honestly, I don’t want to hear about what Middletown CAN be, I want to hear about what Middletown WILL be. I want to hear about what specific steps are planned to make that happen. For instance, I asked a version of the same questions in an open-ended Facebook post, and part of one response from a friend who is not a politician was:

“Mandatory de-escalation training for city police, require police to keep firearms locked in the trunk of their car unless it becomes clear that lethal force is required, establish unarmed community assistance division, and establish special mental health response teams. Police funding tied to officer violence and mandatory replacement of chief if precinct shows pattern of excessive force.” 

It’s not that those are necessarily the best ideas. I bring this up because a random friend of mine was able to come up with a more specific and doable plan for something she has general concern about, as opposed to her trying to convince me to vote for her.

I agree, there should be better dialogue between police and other citizens. Show me what that will look like. While I’m on the subject, are Middletown Police being trained in communication modalities such as NonViolent Communication? Racial sensitivity? Noting how stressful being an officer is, is there both easy access and motivation to get counseling? Would the Police Department be interested in Meditation or Mindfulness training? (If the answer to the latter is yes, I have been teaching meditation over a decade and would love to provide this service.)

“Accessibility and transparency are crucial in building a stronger relationship based communication and trust.” This is 100% true. But given what I’ve pointed out previously in this letter, do you think this describes how you have been engaging the citizens of Middletown as a mayoral candidate thus far?

That all said, if you still want to discuss things in person, I would love to, on one condition. I would like to meet downtown and chat while we do a neighborhood cleanup.

In a mutual love for this great city,

Richard J. Mackin