I’ve covered Brighton since there was a picture of Ronald Reagan hanging on the wall in the supervisor’s office.
Then, it was a Republican stronghold, and had been since the Civil War.
But it’s been Democrat for a generation now, pushed across the political line by the changing of an age and the earnest efforts of organizers at kitchen tables and Town Board meetings. A snapshot of suburban America, the ripening of the seeds of progressivism planted in college classrooms and reinforced by a growing social order.
That’s been the signs in the front yards in the autumns of election years.
But inside, in the living rooms and the schools and the synagogues, Brighton has been noteworthy for its decency and accomplishment. It is a community of people who largely work hard and make good choices and love their families. It not only functions, it excels, and its children tend to be children of promise, embracing the positive values of their families and neighbors.
It is a good place. It is a good town. It is a home to good people.
But that is all up in the air now. Ironically and surprisingly, it is the center of a fratricidal fight over bigotry, in which claims and accusations echo across social media and slurs and taunts are shouted from passing cars.
It has become a place where town board member Robin Wilt – the lone black town board member – has denounced the community on Facebook as anti-black and anti-Muslim, and accused the police department of bias against African-Americans. It has become a community where Jewish residents decry what they see as anti-Semitism in parts of the progressive movement and Democratic Party, and where distinctively dressed Jews say they are mocked as they walk to worship on the Sabbath.
Some Jews have begun to think that Brighton may no longer be a safe place for them, having served as the center of Rochester Judaism since Joseph Avenue was looted and burned in the 1960s. Children and grandchildren of the Holocaust see echoes of horrors passed in family and religious history.
Supporters of Robin Wilt see racism and sexism in public criticism of her, and opponents of Robin Wilt see race manipulation and bomb throwing in her grasping for power and prominence.
It’s all a mess, a divisive, heartbreaking, community-changing mess.
And nobody’s talking about it.
Not the press, not the town supervisor or Town Board, not the Democratic Party.
In an era of sharp racial tension and scrutiny, a black public official has called her own police department biased, and nobody covered it and the town supervisor had no comment. In an era of sharp racial tension and scrutiny, a black public official has accused her constituents of being racists and bigots.
And that doesn’t make the evening news?
A year after the 6 and 11 were non-stop PR for folks with their fists in the air and claims of racism on their lips, and nobody will report on this elected official’s claims?
And in a society conditioned to utter “Never again,” and where random anonymous offensive graffiti move to the top of the newscast, nobody is reporting the claims that Jewish families have been heckled walking to worship?
None of that is newsworthy anymore? None of that is worth the attention of the town’s elected officials?
The answer is clearly: No.
And the reason is because the fight is within the progressive movement. It pits one brand of Democrat against another. It goes counter to message, and it potentially spotlights the cynical hatefulness of race bating.
The progressive powers that be are all looking the other way hoping the Brighton mess will go away.
Which is totally wrong.
I think Robin Wilt is a crank, and her claims of racism and bigotry are lies meant to benefit her and her clique politically, creating leverage for herself by making potential foes terrified she will call them racists. The folks on the evening news apparently think the same thing. But that’s not really our call to make. It’s the voters’.
Nobody has the right to ignore the claim by a black official that black people are being discriminated against. That claim must be taken seriously and investigated.
If it is true, a problem needs to be fixed. If it is false, a different problem needs to be fixed.
The same is true of claims of anti-Semitism. They are so significant and horrifying that they cannot be ignored. If true, that horror must be faced. If not true, a different horror needs to be faced.
But either way, it can’t be ignored.
By the town supervisor, or by the evening news.
It’s time to tackle Brighton’s claims of bigotry head on.
And to remember that, the political bombast of the moment notwithstanding, Brighton is an excellent place to live and raise a family, it is a community of people of the first quality.
And that shouldn’t be ruined over politics and ambition.