The Cradle of Apathy

Do you care only about yourself? Do you feel bad about it? If not, you may continue with the grasping, solipsistic travesty you tell yourself is a life. Best of luck. If you do feel bad, however, help would seem to be on the way, to judge from this month's first-ever Boston Civic Summit. City council president Maureen Feeney conceived the event following the embarrassing 13 percent voter turnout in last November's municipal elections, then signed up a board full of A-list backers, including Jarrett Barrios from Blue Cross Blue Shield and superlawyer Cheryl Cronin. Invite Bostonians to air their concerns about the state of the city, the thinking goes, and you might figure out why so many have become disengaged.

For the most part, the media (okay, chiefly me, writing on this magazine's blog) have so far monomaniacally focused on the political implications of the event—specifically how, when the reenergized council president first went to the press with her idea in January, Hizzoner nearly burst into flames. (Councilors holding summits to diagnose citywide problems is a big no-no in Tom Menino's Boston.) But here I want to focus more on whether things have, in fact, gotten bad enough to necessitate a whole summit on apathy in the first place, and if so, whether the voters' apathy is actually justified. Feeney has spoken of how "that great ‘torch' of civic leadership that was passed to my generation is being kept aglow by hands that are too few and too tired," implying that the youth (what with their iPods and so forth) are at fault for this supposed mass disengagement. But the reality is, the low voter turnout and the disengagement it implies is less an indictment of Boston's young people than it is one of a city government that's failed time and time again to prove its relevancy to young people. By many indications, they already do care about the city—just not the ghastly parcel City Hall is sitting on. And it's hard to blame them.

When social scientists talk about civic engagement, it can mean a number of things—from voting to volunteering, to protesting, to inviting neighbors over for a cookout, to reading the paper—all of which reinforce one another. Say you move into a house on a block where people make an effort to know their neighbors. You get over your natural Bostonian distrust of strangers and get to know the person next door, who happens to volunteer with, say, Boston Cares.

You've always felt vaguely guilty about never volunteering (you are, after all, an overeducated white liberal with spare time), but like most people you're inclined to wait until you've been asked. So you and your neighbor start volunteering at a local afterschool program, teaching poor kids to read. After a few weeks of that, a bell goes off in your head. You think, "Wow, this town is a disaster. I'd better go vote someone out of office!"

Now, here's what's so interesting about Boston's present predicament. You would expect, judging by the pitiful voter turnout, that residents as a whole have sunk into the rank well of self-involvement that the social-isolationist boomers disappeared into years ago. Not necessarily. Enrollment in Boston Cares, which works with more than 165 schools and nonprofits, jumped 30 percent last year, just as it did the year before, and is on pace to do so again this year. City Year Boston's Young Heroes and City Heroes programs, which enlist middle and high schoolers to help out in their communities, have seen enrollment climb 25 percent and nearly 50 percent, respectively. The Greater Boston Food Bank has gone from 11,000 volunteer visits to 16,500 in the span of two years. Donations to the Boston Foundation, which distributed $92 million to area nonprofits last year, doubled between 2006 and 2007.