How not to write about Telephone Hill
- Michelle Bonnet Hale
- Dec 31
- 4 min read
By Michelle Bonnet Hale
What drove me off the Juneau Assembly last year was the fever pitch of issues; the deep anger felt by my friends and constituents about, well, many things, including CBJ issues; and the speed at which a normal-seeming issue became a flashpoint. There are no normal issues these days.
It makes sense for me to come off the Assembly and write columns about local issues. I’ve written a few, but I’ve had writer’s block, largely from my attempts to write about local issues without adding ugliness to already painful issues.
I am stymied.
I am stumped by the tall order I’ve given myself. At every turn, when I want to share my opinion about an issue, I struggle with doing so in a way that is not unkind, that treats all parties involved with respect, that does not add to conflict. I guard myself against name-calling and especially against its dangerous cousin, casting seemingly innocent aspersions. Tall order, indeed.
While on the Assembly, I supported development of Telephone Hill, but I knew that it would be one tough issue for the city to deal with. I still do support it. I’m saddened by the intensity of the conflict that has developed and saddened at the difficulties experienced by people as they have had to move from their long-treasured homes. I have a lot of opinions about the issue and I’ll mostly keep those to myself. Again, I don’t want to add bruises.
I ask myself why it is so hard to contribute meaningfully to this conversation without deepening existing wounds or creating new ones. Issues these days seem to race to foregone conclusions, churned through the well-oiled machines of outrage. We are all so angry about so many things.
In his 2012 book, "The Righteous Mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion," Jonathan Haidt proposes that we first form our opinions by following our intuition, and then apply reason to justify those opinions. Now I understand that the book itself generated controversy, which makes me laugh, but he proposes a good starting point for understanding our current situation. First we have the gut response and then we layer on justifications for our intuition.
In my years on the Assembly I was steeped in the need to create housing. I’m kind of a data-driven person, so when the state transferred the property to the city my instinct was to put high-density housing on Telephone Hill.
For some, the very idea of evicting tenants, even if those tenants have known for years that they had no lease nor certainty of living on Telephone Hill, that very idea was an anathema so intense that no other arguments could penetrate. For others, their opposition was founded in a desire to preserve historical buildings.
In both our cases, I argue that instinct came first, as Haidt has proposed. On both “sides” of the issue, numerous logical arguments can be made. Right now the emotional appeal is winning in the court of public opinion, though perhaps not in the court of law. I feel for everyone involved: My friends who’ve lived on Telephone Hill; the city with the impossibly difficult issue to cope with; people freshly out of housing in Juneau; and people with no long-term housing options who leave our city due to the lack of available homes.
I’ve wondered for years now if there is some other model we could follow when a potentially volatile issue arises. I’ve appealed via this column that we cannot afford clickbait journalism in this time of controversy. I continue to argue that the well-worn path of oppositional politics is damaging to us, both personally and as a community.
There are other ways of resolving local issues, beyond scapegoating and creating villains. Social psychologist Lee Ross coined the term “fundamental attribution error” in the 1970s to describe our great talent for “othering” people. When someone else does something we don’t like, we attribute the error to their character or personality. When we ourselves or someone we support does something we should not like, we justify the wrong by considering the situational and environmental factors.
Understanding both of these factors — the fundamental attribution error, and instinct driving our decision-making – might be essential clues to dialing back our rhetoric and instead creating understanding. We have to try.
While still on the Assembly, a friend who lived on Telephone Hill invited my partner and me for dinner. We had a lovely evening. We learned a lot more about each other: Our values, our dreams for our community, our aesthetics. By the end of the evening, we still didn’t agree on the Assembly’s approach to Telephone Hill, but we parted better friends than when we arrived for dinner.
We love our community. We can do this. When we read an opposing opinion piece, we can go beyond our kneejerk reaction, reread the piece, and try to understand the position of the writer. When I criticized wealthy Juneauites for sponsoring the tax rollback measures in a recent column, I could have thought more deeply about their distaste for writing checks to the city. I could have humanized them rather than othering them.
When Juneau residents opposed to the Telephone Hill redevelopment felt that their battle might not be successful, they might have talked to Assembly members in support of the development, over coffee, and tried to understand why the Assembly is supporting the development, rather than publicly proposing a recall effort.
It’s hard and it needs to start at home, so I myself am trying harder. We have a beautiful community, but there is so much discord here, and it just doesn’t have to be that way. Please join me in transforming the conversation.
• Michelle Bonnet Hale’s roots go deep in Juneau and Southeast Alaska. She and her partner share their household with various relatives and three dogs. She served for six years on the Juneau Assembly.
