Local opinion: Tucson fences raise questions about public safety

Tucson has been my home since I entered this world, so to say I have memories all over town is not an exaggeration. My daily drives provide the perfect setting to watch the slide show of memories play in my head. The hospital where I was born. The schools where I was educated. The places where lifelong friendships started. The places I have volunteered. The synagogue my paternal family attended. The church where my wife and I said “I do.” The list goes on and on.

These places make up the community I know and love. They all have something else in common. One by one, they have gained a wrought iron fence. Every one of these fences was paid for by someone who decided that waiting on the city for help was no longer a viable plan.

Families, schools, congregations, nonprofits small businesses — most of these are not groups with money to spare on fencing. They spent it anyway because they feel no other help is coming. Block by block, from one end of the city to another in all directions, the pattern of partition is evident.

I understand why. People put up fences because they are worried about safety, about property, about the unpredictable. These worries are real, and I don’t dismiss them. But a fence is also a small statement about how safe a place feels, and when enough of them go up across a city, they start to say something collectively that no single person intended.

This past week I watched your video about the construction of another fence and the disastrous consequences that come along with it, and the fervent plea you made to the powers that be to stop and change their ways. So I now do the same to you: Mayor Romero and City Council members, will you stop the current course of your approaches and reform the way you are governing and enforcing the laws here in Tucson?

Like you with your request on that video, I eagerly await a response from the mayor and council that shows humility and a willingness to change direction, a sentiment that I share with many of my neighbors and community.

Tucson has always been a place where people know their neighbors, and I would like to keep it that way. I'd rather we address what’s driving the fences than get used to living behind them. In the words of the great Cowboy Western classic, “Don’t fence me in.”