Response to ‘Here We Go Again’
To the editor:
I have read “Here We Go Again” with some interest. It is a remarkable piece of writing; not because it presents a particularly compelling case against FISH, but because it manages to argue, at considerable length, that the people who live, work, educate their children, serve meals, clean homes, maintain properties, build houses, care for residents, and keep Sanibel functioning somehow cease to be part of the Sanibel community the moment they drive across the causeway at the end of their shift.
Apparently, community membership is now determined by where one sleeps at night.
That is an interesting proposition for an island whose economy depends so heavily on people who do not live here.
The author seems particularly troubled that FISH assists people who work on Sanibel but live elsewhere. One wonders who, precisely, he imagines is serving his meals, cleaning his home, maintaining his property, working in restaurants and hotels, caring for visitors, landscaping gardens, repairing buildings, stocking stores and performing the countless other jobs upon which island life depends.
Do those people magically become “mainland residents” rather than members of the Sanibel community simply because housing costs make living on the island unrealistic?
And if someone who works on Sanibel experiences an emergency, needs food assistance, cannot pay a utility bill, needs help navigating healthcare, or needs support keeping their family stable, are we really supposed to tell them, “Sorry — you crossed the causeway last night, so please take your problem elsewhere”?
That is not community-mindedness. It is an extraordinarily narrow definition of community.
The letter also repeatedly describes the proposed FISH facility as “massive,” “monstrous,” and “unnecessary,” while simultaneously acknowledging that FISH has provided critical assistance following major disasters. It then proposes that FISH simply continue doing that work without the facilities designed to make the organization more capable of doing it.
That is rather like arguing that a fire department does not need a larger station because it successfully fought fires from its old one.
The reality is that resilience is not measured by whether an organization managed to improvise after a disaster. It is measured by whether the community learns from that experience and becomes better prepared for the next one.
The author also appears to believe that because FISH managed to distribute food following hurricanes without this facility, there can be no legitimate reason to build a facility capable of doing that work more effectively in the future.
By that logic, we should never improve anything that once worked adequately.
Perhaps the most revealing argument, however, concerns who FISH should serve. FISH is not a government agency attempting to replace Lee County Social Services. It is a community nonprofit responding to people who are connected to this community and need assistance. That includes residents, workers, families, seniors, students and others whose lives intersect with Sanibel.
The suggestion that a child who attends school on Sanibel, but lives elsewhere should somehow be excluded from community support because their home happens to be on the other side of the causeway is particularly difficult to reconcile with any meaningful understanding of community.
Children do not choose the housing market.
Workers do not necessarily choose where they can afford to live.
And people experiencing hardship do not conveniently arrange their emergencies according to municipal boundaries.
Perhaps the author would prefer that FISH hand someone a map and explain precisely where the city limits end before deciding whether their circumstances warrant compassion.
Thankfully, that is not how FISH operates.
There is also something deeply ironic about objecting to FISH helping workers who live off-island while simultaneously worrying that Sanibels traffic and economy depend upon those same workers. If the island wants the labor of these people, it seems reasonable that the island should also recognize that they are human beings who occasionally need assistance.
Community support cannot reasonably mean: We value what you contribute to Sanibel, but only while you are at work.
The letters concern about taxpayer responsibility and Lee County funding is certainly a legitimate subject for public discussion. Public money should always be scrutinized. But that discussion should be based on actual financial arrangements, obligations and facts; not speculation about what FISH supposedly intends to become or assertions that the organization is secretly being transformed into a Lee County social-services office.
Likewise, reasonable people can disagree about the size, design, zoning variances or financing of a proposed building. That is exactly why there is a planning process, public hearings and elected officials whose responsibility it is to evaluate those questions.
But opposition to a building should not be disguised as opposition to the people the building is intended to serve.
And perhaps that is ultimately what is most striking about this letter.
It speaks repeatedly about protecting “our” community while drawing an increasingly elaborate circle around who is permitted to belong inside it.
There is a much better definition of community.
It is the people who live here.
It is the people who work here.
It is the people who educate our children, care for our seniors, serve our visitors, maintain our homes, run our businesses and keep the island operating.
It is the people who may live on Sanibel permanently, and those who cross the causeway every morning because they cannot afford to.
And it is the organizations willing to help those people when life becomes difficult.
FISH does not exist to make Sanibel more convenient for outsiders. It exists because people in a community sometimes need help, and because a healthy community does not ask whether someone deserves compassion based on their ZIP code.
Perhaps before deciding that FISH has somehow “overstepped its role,” it would be worth asking a much simpler question:
Who exactly do we believe makes up the Sanibel community?
Because if the answer excludes the people who work here every day, we may want to take a very careful look at what we mean when we call ourselves a community.
Anita Brähn
Sanibel