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| Plainfield's city seal acknowledges its incorporation in 1869 -- 150 years ago in 2019. |
Under Mayor Adrian O. Mapp, Plainfield is beginning to make preparations to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its incorporation as a city in 1869.
Shep Brown, soon to become Director of the to-be-created Department of Social Services (yay Shep!) has been tasked with putting together a committee of community representatives to make plans for the 150th years' celebrations.
I am pleased to have been asked to serve on the committee.
Since I will be unable to attend the committee's first meeting, I thought to outline some of my hopes for a celebration of Plainfield's sesquicentennial.
ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY FULLY
I would hope that a celebration of our sesquicentennial would engage the whole community --
- Businesses
- The Professions
- The Religious Communities
- Educational Community
- Non-profit, Community and Cultural Organizations
PORTRAY PLAINFIELD WARTS AND ALL
Too many celebrations like this become sugary and sentimentalized. I would hope that a sesquicentennial celebration of the Queen City would honestly portray the community history "warts and all" including the following dimensions --LOOK FORWARD
-- examining how far we have come and how different (better?) we are on these fronts today.
- Race
- Class
- Gender
- Immigration Status
- Religious affiliation
Lastly, I would hope that some of the aspirations and insights of the Plainfield Vision 2025 project could be taken into account by way of pointing toward a future Plainfield's promise.
While chartering Plainfield as a city was a positive move, given the temper of the times in the "Gilded Age," we did not get from there to here along a straight line.
Change did not necessarily come easily and I hope we are able to give a (relatively) full account of how we got from the founding of a city which privileged a few and excluded many to the much more inclusive community we live in and love today.
Mazel tov!
-- Dan Damon [ follow ]
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