Brer Abbott, Neighbor

For a single highly newsworthy week (the School flooded; the Village Administrator finally admitted to installing toxic piping; the Chief of Police acknowledged fingerprinting Boy Scouts), Brer Abbott served Bronxville-Eastchester — where he raised his son and daughter from preschool — proudly as its PATCH Mayor. He also served (but for much longer: five years) the Village of Bronxville as Trustee, Vice-President, and President of Bronxville Public Library's Board of Trustees (by appointment of Mayor Mary Marvin). Mr Abbott (please call him Sean) was also the Library's middle school book club moderator. (He is a book and magazine editor by profession — Random House, HarperCollins, Hearst, et al — and has an MFA in dramaturgy.)

Consequently demoted to "PATCH Poster," Brer Abbott remains, at PATCH, even more devoted to promoting responsible journalism, civic literacy & numeracy, local history & natural history, public health, and also in helping the Bronxville School Foundation, Inc., to remember to refer parents come Ad-Advent (Black Friday thru Boxing Day) to #ShopBronxville and never ever ever click on— Do you mean the river? Or do you mean the jungle? In South America? Exactly. Bronxville kids are way too smart.

"The small-town newspaper will save democracy. It is the next great journalistic project, is the neighborhood beat. Take it up. You will be the only newspaper in town in no time. Because what is journalism? Not constant alerts of merit badge and tree down. Journalism is fiercely honest civic inquiry into why we are the way we are. Why do we live like this?

¶ Citizen journalism, at the community level, is the start of figuring out a different way of governing ourselves — a healthier way. Much better for my own kids, who live where I write, as a former PATCH Mayor (September 19–27, 2018) — and still thoroughly committed representative of the Fourth Estate. A journalist.

¶ 'Why do you think you are one?' is the first tough question you must ask — yourself. You can only answer it by doing it. And you must do it. Because only you, as a beat reporter, a genuine journalist, dreaded by DNC and G.O.P. equally, can assure the public that wherein you are publishing is actually a newspaper. Published by and for the community that in truth is one.

¶ It's going to mean something again, sooner than you may think: having a newspaper in town, and not some advertising vector/public address system for elected officials. The existential crisis that is Fake News begins at home in No News.

¶ What an amazing opportunity for desperately needed activist citizenship, and for the genuinely green environment — notably represented in PATCH's own typeface — that is our only hope if we're going to continue to insist on living in suburbs and small towns.

¶ For its bravery in publishing — and actively promoting — investigative journalism that challenges a given community's typically unwarranted (and democratically contraindicated) sense of exceptionalism, will PATCH be remembered alongside THE INTERCEPT, TRUTHDIG, JACOBIN, and other bold and honest journalistic enterprises? Publishing truth to power, especially at the "hyperlocal" level — where good governance counts most but is mostly ignored — is our only way out of the present crisis. Can PATCH lead the way? Let's find out."

—Brer Abbott, PATCH Poster (Former PATCH Mayor), Bronxville-Eastchester, NY on 29 Sept 2018

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