As many of you may have noticed, there has been a significant reduction in the number of people who are illegally parking their vehicles. Many people, once informed that wrong-way parking was unlawful and potentially dangerous, were thankful to have been so informed and simply modified their parking habits.
However, more than a few encounters made it clear that not everyone was pleased, no matter how well-meaning the Safe Parking initiative was or how self-evident the motivation behind it. It seems to have been a lightning rod for all sorts of feelings. For some, it was viewed as an assault on long-held neighborhood customs. For others, I suspect, it was perceived as an ultimatum. But most people accepted that they were doing something that wasn’t exactly kosher; it just hadn’t risen to a level of importance where they were motivated to do anything about it yet.
But there was also a small but not insignificant number of people who responded in more extreme ways that were a harbinger of things to come that I never anticipated. It began with a few inappropriate phone calls to my home, castigating me for annoying people over a trivial “non-problem.” Another condemned me for being a troublemaker.
Residents on certain streets immediately started removing signs that I had put up. It seemed like an extreme reaction to what I felt was a reasonable attempt to respectfully engage the community. This upset me and eventually led me to make a very big mistake. I informed Baltimore City about the rash of illegal parkers on those blocks. It was a drastic error. My intent was to ignite neighborhood support and to meet the challenge collectively and collaboratively. But emotion took over.
Soon after, a friend who received a citation angrily accused me of “creating a machlokes.” But a machlokes is a disagreement born of informed discussion, and those who decided to undermine this initiative weren’t interested in having a discussion. They just wanted it to stop. Illegal parkers were breaking the law, and I became the problem for calling attention to it.
I was invited to attend the Cheswolde Neighborhood Association’s Hanson Avenue Street Fair by Yitzy Schleifer. The flier said that it was free to all who came. I set up a small table on an unoccupied piece of sidewalk, displayed the Safe Parking Lawn signs, and offered Safe Parking bumper stickers to those who wanted them. For the next hour, I fielded questions from friends and passersby about why I was doing it.
Someone I know came up to me and ordered me to leave the premises. He was angry. He acted as if he had the authority to do so. (I later learned that this was not the case at all.) I was interfering with nothing, displacing no one, and interacting respectfully with everyone. He kept up the verbal assault until I agreed to leave.
A couple of days later, I received a call from an Officer Hensley from Baltimore City. They had received two complaints, and I was being cited for posting signs on public property. I was fined $500. They said I could have been cited $500 for each sign.
I stayed out that night past midnight removing as many of the 100-plus signs as I could remember posting. I will need to take time off work to appeal the citation.
I imagine it must have seemed sweetly ironic to my detractors that in trying to get people to obey a simple parking statute that I would end up being fined for violating a statute myself. However, the one that I naively violated was created by Baltimore City to discourage advertisers, not to punish people trying to improve public safety. Meanwhile, the illegal parkers were and are purposely ignoring one designed to accomplish the very same thing.
It felt awful to get a small taste of what I considered baseless hatred. I made mistakes during this initiative, but none with bad intentions. As I removed the remaining signs, it was clear that they had had a positive effect. I fear that, now that they’re gone, it will only be temporary. We still have an illegal parking problem. Only now, Baltimore City will send investigators, post “official signs,” and start ticketing illegal parkers. Why should it have had to come to that?
Why do we stubbornly park illegally, illegally hold our cell phones to our ears as we drive, and walk down the middle of the street on Shabbos? These things feed a stereotype that we observant Jews follow a separate set of rules than everyone else. The world watches us more closely than ever, and each message that we send – that we don’t care what the rest of the world does – feeds a beast that demands increasing resources to keep us safe.
The Safe Parking Initiative, a modest attempt to shine a light on something small ended up pitting neighbors against one another. It was never about right or wrong. It was about working together to make our neighborhoods a safer place for all of us.
If you found this article surprising or upsetting and you’re still interested in supporting the Safe Parking Initiative, there are still bumper stickers and lawn signs available. Call me and I’ll be happy to bring one over: Neil Rauch, 410-318-6737.
