Plainfield prepares to celebrate its 150th birthday

Plainfield's city seal acknowledges its
incorporation in 1869 -- 150 years ago in 2019.

Under Mayor Adrian O. Mapp, Plainfield is beginning to make preparations to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its incorporation as a city in 1869.

Shep Brown, soon to become Director of the to-be-created Department of Social Services (yay Shep!) has been tasked with putting together a committee of community representatives to make plans for the 150th years' celebrations.

I am pleased to have been asked to serve on the committee.

Since I will be unable to attend the committee's first meeting, I thought to outline some of my hopes for a celebration of Plainfield's sesquicentennial.

ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY FULLY

I would hope that a celebration of our sesquicentennial would engage the whole community --

• Businesses
• The Professions
• The Religious Communities
• Educational Community
• Non-profit, Community and Cultural Organizations

PORTRAY PLAINFIELD WARTS AND ALL

Too many celebrations like this become sugary and sentimentalized. I would hope that a sesquicentennial celebration of the Queen City would honestly portray the community history "warts and all" including the following dimensions --

• Race
• Class
• Gender
• Immigration Status
• Religious affiliation

-- examining how far we have come and how different (better?) we are on these fronts today.

LOOK FORWARD

Lastly, I would hope that some of the aspirations and insights of the Plainfield Vision 2025 project could be taken into account by way of pointing toward a future Plainfield's promise.

While chartering Plainfield as a city was a positive move, given the temper of the times in the "Gilded Age," we did not get from there to here along a straight line.

Change did not necessarily come easily and I hope we are able to give a (relatively) full account of how we got from the founding of a city which privileged a few and excluded many to the much more inclusive community we live in and love today.

Mazel tov!

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 -- Dan Damon [ follow ]

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