Looking for Leadership....

 “It’s not politics. This is ethics. This is humanity, this is community. This is trying to figure out a way to live.”   Mary Traver.

When Mary Traver spoke those words, she was being interviewed near the end of her life with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey about the meaning of their careers as folksingers. The music of Peter, Paul & Mary has spanned most of my adult life, and I turned back to it recently looking for a song. I found about 20 that I really need right now.

But her words struck me as applying not only to folk music, but also to the struggle for survival of small towns and rural places that’s the real root of Lindsay’s current conundrums. It’s what I was reaching for last week when I wrote what a better Lindsay would look like to me. Many told me they share that vision. The question is how to bring about a shift in the focus of our city government.

“Have you been over to see the pool?  It’s gone...” said a customer sadly at RN Market Saturday night. I confessed that I’d stopped my vigilant walks to the park, and she comforted me with “It’s hard.”  It’s hard also to watch the users of the Senior Center struggle with getting in and out, no provisions made for them during construction.

And it’s hard going to the city council meetings month after month, where the SOS continues that passes for governance. You don’t even have to speak English to detect the Council’s complete rejection of public input:  two or three meetings is all it takes to see the futility of trying to get them to change.

For some people, changing the faces on the Council is the answer. I am 100% behind that solution, because all five have shown themselves unwilling to question the actions or motives of the staff, much less their goals and objectives. It is the staff that has put us $36 million in debt and saddled us with wasteful, unsupportable projects while neglecting our real needs. A new council will not only have to figure out how to engage the public in determining our future, but also how to keep the staff from doing it. It’s a large order.

So it seems to me that something more is also needed besides new humans in the five seats:  some leadership in the community itself needs to start taking form, not a single person but groups of people starting to think together about what this town needs, about what we want for our children and elders and for ourselves as we remain in this good place. It could start in the churches and in the schools. Our service clubs could be involved. Perhaps neighborhood groups could form (like those the Dolores Huerta Foundation has been encouraging among the Spanish-speaking population, but extending also to the bilingual and English speakers) looking to identify issues in their immediate vicinities. It could start anywhere.

I’m looking for leadership for this community -  town and countryside together. Want to help?