Editorial

That happened at Monday's joint Council/Planning commission work session at the Community Center, which took three hours to consider whether or not a proposal for a new five-story mixed use structure on West Broad Street — designated for affordable senior housing — should be considered for approval. The Council will make its final decision to allow the process to go forward this Monday, with no final decisions planned until mid-November.

In the spacious meeting room were seen all the “usual suspects:” the Council members, the Planners, the City Hall staff, and the protagonists of the project aligned with the Falls Church Housing Corporation. Also seen were the opponents to the project, all neighbors to the proposed site. Fidgeting, murmuring, passing notes, glaring, getting up and walking around, they were making sure everyone else knew they were there taking deep umbrage at every suggestion that the project is possibly viable. They want all the land in question kept pristine for a park, an expansion of the West End Park, for their pleasure and that of their children.

But as I looked around, I started seeing more in the room. In the empty folding chairs, and in many other imaginary ones, I started seeing shadowy shapes of people. They were sitting there silently. They were 100 or so modestly-dressed elderly people with looks of longing on their faces. They, too, desired a safe, secure and warm home and neighborhood to live their later years. They, too, would like parkland near their homes and the sound of children laughing and playing. Who has the right, or gall, to deny these humble and deserving people these things? Who would refuse to share access to these things with these people?

But they did not bustle and frown. They just sat there silently. The problem is, the way people were speaking to the issue at hand, I suspect that maybe I was the only person to see them. Invisible to the room, they are nonetheless very real.

It can be argued that good government is rooted in the ability to see such people. Some great American once said that the measure of the true morality of a society can be found in its ability, or lack thereof, to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. In that spirit, those who fight best for social justice see the dirty faces of young children, the pained faces of the victims of war and famine, the silent faces of the isolated and vulnerable elderly looming like a cloud of witnesses in the midst of every debate, campaign, or political fight. They're the silent ones, the “out of sight, out of mind” ones who the fight is really all about, and who make even the most distasteful struggles worth the effort.