by @BarryRafkind in Economy & Poverty, Environment and Open Space
Posted on April 23, 2009 at 8:50 am
Last Modified on April 23, 2009 at 8:50 am
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Last night, I attended a presentation about Transition Towns, a grassroots movement to catalyze community visioning processes with an aim towards local, sustainable, and environmentally friendly economies. The presenters admitted this was not meant as a panacea for the impending triangle emergency of peak oil, global climate change, and our economic crisis, but it was at least something concrete that people can do together with their neighbors. If enough communities around the world become Transition Towns, then we might just reach a tipping point and save our planet and civilization from catastrophe.
The SCA organizers collected participants’ email addresses and promised to send us all more information and set up further discussions for a visioning process in Somerville.
Personally, I think Somerville would benefit greatly by coming together to discuss our collective talents to develop solutions to our shared problems.
What is your vision for Somerville? Leave your ideas in the comments below.
Read more on the Somerville Climate Action Google group.
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I’d love to see this happen, but only if a way more representative group of people were involved than attended the meeting Wednesday night. Somerville has many different population segments and audience at the meeting was overwhelmingly white and green or left-leaning. In other words, it was the usual suspects talking to each other. Which is fine, but doesn’t get anywhere near being a place where we can all work together with our neighbors to develop shared solutions.
For such a process to work it has to include the collective talents of the entire community, “progressives”, “Old Somerville”, immigrants, you name it. Each population has something different and valuable to contribute, but that won’t happen unless the organizers make a real effort to get the word out to and really welcome different groups that don’t necessarily hang out online or at independent coffee shops or read English.
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Julia, I agree with you. Would you like to help publicize this project to different segments of the community? Do you have any ideas about how to make this successful?
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Well, I’d fall into the category of white, English-speaking only, green and left-leaning, so I’m not sure I’m best placed to spread the word to different segments of the community, but I wouldn’t mind helping.
To spread the word, I would:
*make sure local print publications, including church bulletins, if possible, get advance notice of any meetings.
*put flyers up in all 3 library branches, laundromats that allow flyers, convenience stores that allow flyers, churches/temples/mosques and community centers that allow flyers, and any other places where flyers can be posted.
*Find someone to translate the flyers and emails into Spanish, Portuguese, and/or any other language you can translate it into— even if the meetings will be conducted only in English, there are people who understand spoken English but don’t read it.
And I don’t think that there needs to be a big or exclusive focus on global warming and peak oil, or a prioritizing of these issues over others that fit the transition community mold. It doesn’t matter if someone isn’t interested in or even doesn’t believe in climate change & peak oil. To me, this is a movement that can appeal to a much broader range of interests: people interested in saving money, people interested in meeting their neighbors, people interested in community and neighborhood, people interested in general sustainability, people interested in learning and sharing skills. Family values folks might be interested since it’s about old-fashioned communities where neighbors know and help each other. Maybe some people would be interested just as a way to practice their English, and find they have know-how to share. Connect with people about it from whichever angle they’re coming from.
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