House Editorial: The politics of snow
Or, why shoveling the snow off the sidewalks matters
Posted on February 22, 2007

In the last week or so, Harrisonburg got its fill of snow. Everything that comes with winter weather, from snowball fights to car accidents, we had in full. Many of us are surely glad to see it all melt away. But it is likely that those without cars are even happier. The mound of snow and ice covering Harrisonburg last week — and people’s languid response to it — uncovered the latent political, economic and social disparities impacting the car-less of our community.

More than 20 years ago, Langdon Winner’s definitive book “The Whale and the Reactor” showed how even something as “neutral” as a bridge can have political consequences. All of us who have driven on highways are accustomed to overpasses, which all look the same and have little to no bearing on our travels. But on Long Island’s Wantagh Parkway, designed by New York’s master architect Robert Moses, overpasses are phenomenally low, some as little as nine feet off the ground.

This was intentional. Moses, a class elitist and racist, loved his precious Jones Beach, where the parkway led. At the time of the road’s construction, white “upper-” and “comfortable middle-” class people (his names) would be able to drive their cars to Jones Beach; poor black New Yorkers, relegated to 12-foot tall public buses, would never be able to make it. The white integrity of his beach community was therefore preserved, further splitting wealth and power along racial and economic lines. As New York planner Lee Koppleman told Moses’ biographer, “The old son of a gun had made sure that buses would never be able to use his goddamned parkways.” And he did it all with a bridge.

Here in Harrisonburg, the snow has provided another example of how inanimate objects can distribute power to some and keep it from others. The deplorable conditions of our town in the last week-and-a-half affected everyone: cars were stuck, school was canceled, etc. But for those without cars, the impact of the snow was even more intense. The Harrisonburg public transportation system — already arguably inadequate and inarguably skewed toward JMU students at the expense of the community — was disrupted, preventing the car-less from getting around.

The condition of the sidewalks around town, whether it be in apartment complexes, in business districts or in front of private homes, further complicated the transportation needs of those without cars. Only on Tuesday, after temperatures reached into the 50s, did the snow on some sidewalks begin to disappear — a full week after it ended up there — even though Harrisonburg’s city code provides residents three hours to shovel their sidewalks after the snow ceases to fall (or 10 a.m., if it stops at night).

This apathetic attitude has the same effective class and race implications as Moses’ bridges. Those without cars are more likely to be impoverished; correspondingly, they are more likely to be African-American or Latino. Harrisonburg was not pedestrian-friendly before the snow (ever try to cross the business district on Route 33 east of town on foot?), and the snow exponentially compounded their difficulty getting to work or the supermarket.

Residents of Harrisonburg, their landlords and their businesses all have a codified obligation to shovel the sidewalks. But it is not just the law we disregard when we do not; it is our neighbors. Our laziness further oppresses the already oppressed. And we did it all with snow.