There is an expression among native Hawaiians – a shorthand description they use when they observe one of their own speaking disparagingly of the success of another.  I can’t reproduce the Hawaiian words, but I know the translation:  Crabs in a bucket.

Captured crabs, confined in a bucket, will attempt to climb out.  When one makes some progress, it will be pulled back to the bottom of the bucket by others attempting to climb out.

A quarter-century ago, it was an important concept for native Hawaiians, who were taking a cue from their African-American brothers and sisters.  They were seeking ways to preserve their laid-back culture – yet claim their piece of the American dream – in an environment dominated by European and Asian cultures mixed with hard-driving American commercial enterprise.  When someone among them would find a successful formula, the rest would be divided into two camps – those cheering the success, and those decrying a perceived departure from the Hawaiian way.

The latter were the crabs in a bucket, pulling their fellows back.

There’s a lesson in this for Roosevelt Island’s political community – and, unfortunately, something of a parallel.

As Island activists try to find a way out of our particular bucket – no voice in local affairs – there are others who would drag them back.  Recently, the Maple Tree Group (MTG), after some years of work and through the good offices of Senator Olga Mendez, managed to meet with Governor George Pataki to put before him the essentials of a plan under which residents would elect members of the RIOC Board.  Ordinary, democratic, local government, in other words.

Soon enough, other activists got crabby, and not just in the Hawaiian sense.  Island e-mail flowed green with envy and suggestions that no crab should climb out of the bucket – achieve any success – without permission of the others every step of the way.  Suddenly, nearly five years of MTG work toward Island democracy, overwhelmingly endorsed in two referendums (1998 and 2000) and repeatedly backed by the Common Council of the Residents Association, was "secretive" and "mysterious," and part of some sort of evil axis involving The WIRE.

That’s hogwash.  The WIRE chooses not to be a crab.  The WIRE chooses, instead, to support efforts likely to result in an improvement of our circumstances.  It’s easy, when one has grown excessively comfortable with the status quo, to conjure a threat in every effort at change.

There’s nothing mysterious about success except for those to whom success is a stranger.  It involves having a good plan, building support for it, and putting it across with determined hard work.

We can’t know just yet what the outcome will be of MTG’s continuing effort to bring democracy to Roosevelt Island.  We can hope, however, that the crabs who are comfortable stuck at the bottom of the bucket will grow weary of trying to haul others back to the bottom, let the strivers reach for the stars and, perhaps, bring success – and freedom – to us all.