Lexington needs to put ‘liberty and justice into the bones of its blueprint.’

For the average Lexingtonian, what is ”Progress” if not a flux of architectural development? From Hamburg Place to Hamburg Pavilion, from Charlotte Court to Arbor Grove, from Fritz Farm to The Summit, Progress often walks the same road in. It comes all outstretched hands, culling tree and husbandry to beams and shops. It comes twisted ‘round the olive branch of change, converting knowledge and connection to advantageous zoning changes in Opportunity Zones.

Progress sleeps, too, a crater in the middle of our heart for nearly 10 years. It asks for The Dame and pays in broken promise. It trailblazes through the best times of our lives, razing ghettos to subdivisions like the wizened whiskers off a businessman. It is swift, always sure, but rarely does it build with the hands of justice. Progress is not synonymous with equity or humility; it does not consider the welfare for the least of these, not completely.

To know Progress is to understand that the machinations of a clock, like an ideology, have many moving pieces equally and mutually necessary. To understand it is to know the angry stepchild of need, working over its kin; a rabid beast, wild in its passions to consume, to own, to subdue.

And what little regard Progress does have for the disabled single mother living in an in-fill housing project in a South Lexington suburb, it makes up for in segregated public-school districting and a diminishing public transportation system that disadvantages her in the first place.

Progress, not to be confused with prosperity, has little sympathy for the elderly black Vet with glaucoma and bedbugs who cannot make his mortgage payments. And certainly, Progress tells the family with two Master’s and a second lien on their home to mend their bootstraps with the hope that the American Dream still breathes.

There is little room for anomaly in a city where Progress reigns supreme. Here, where the vacancies for Section 8 lessees is only overshadowed by way too many transient bodies ruled obsolete in a sea of bourbon trails and horse racing.

And because Progress is hungry for all the things it does not need, like hydrogen to a battery terminal, it always proceeds the death of a community. Like a bloated mass, Progress leaves its sewage lines to fester and poison the drinking water. Dancing and profiting atop the graves of its ghosts, it always wakes up on the right side of the tracks which is rarely ever cheap.

But to know Progress is to realize that in all its oxymoronic contradictions and intricate fallacies there lies a complexity woven thick, a rich stock reduced down to resiliency, borrowed upon by those for whom glass ceilings and hands up are daydreams even on the best days.

To know Progress is to know hopelessness, but that darkness isn’t the absence of hope and joy. For prosperity, like community, is the one beacon of love that outlives its former brethren, that leaves more than it takes.

Prosperity is East End Days and Julietta Market. It flows from the Legacy trail to Isaac Murphy Memorial Park. Prosperity was born and raised in Davis Bottom and Smithtown. And so, it is as expansive and all-inclusive as the average Lexingtonian’s memories are of yesterday, see? Knowing that although our blood may always bleed red, the grass on either side of the fence is blue and there is always room for one more barbecue.

Lexington is a house with many rooms. And like a tool in skilled hands, Lexington’s citizens can continue to pencil liberty and justice into the bones of its blueprint. We, the people, must still find evident a prosperity not by way of a quick buck or good optics.

We must remember the land on which we stand; the meadowlands of Kentake named for its Iroquoian mother murdered and displaced to neighboring lands in the name of Progress. We must remember that inclusion is just as important as zoning. We must remember that brother has no creed or color or otherness in its honor. We must educate, we must repeal the former to make way for all children, brown children, to prosper.

We must build a home with sound bones, with roots deeper than our limestone, for all the people and the least of them, by the best means. We must build the homes of our grandchildren, today. But first we must crawl beneath the floorboards and inspect the foundation for cracks.

J. Nicole Gordon is a mother, creative, and writer from Lexington, Kentucky.

This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 9:03 AM.