A Message of Hope from
Santa Rosa Together
Our election and the transition to a new Presidency have revealed
deep fractures in the fabric of our national community and politics. No matter
how we voted, if we hope to restore the ability to work together to meet our
challenges, we all need to find ways to overcome the deep divisions that
separate us. In Santa Rosa, we have made some progress in this work. For the
past five years, a diverse group of volunteer community leaders have been working
to get more people engaged and improve and the way we work together. We’ve
created a volunteer, non-partisan organization, Santa Rosa Together, to build
interpersonal connections and focus on strengthening our community. We started
with the belief that we cannot rebuild trust and overcome alienation unless we
all have a meaningful voice and role in the city and we cannot learn from each
other and find common ground without renewed faith in democracy.
Our democracy
was designed to enable a way of life that respects each person’s unique
contribution and engages the talents of all of our citizens. This vision is our democratic heritage,
the gift given to us by generations of sacrifice and struggle. We believe that the
best path to community healing is to reaffirm our commitment to democracy and
rebuild a politics based on our shared democratic values.
Some see our current state as bleak, but in Santa Rosa Together
we do not see it that way. Despite the election, we believe our community is now
more united and inclusive than ever. Our towns are teeming with diversity and in
their daily lives our citizens are building bridges as never before. If we
recognize our potential and rebuild our local politics to give everyone a role
and voice, we will create a democracy that will flourish beyond our own wildest
dreams. Jefferson was right, democracy does needs to be renewed periodically to
make it relevant in a changing world. That is our task today.
We can start by finding ways to restore power and function
to our local organizations and neighborhood level communities. These can be our
democracy schools where more of us can get engaged, get to know each other, and
develop the skills that we need to find common ground and work together. Neighbors
who understand how to do this will be prepared to reject the divisive tactics
of our current politics.
We also need creative new ways to bring our diverse communities
and citizens together to share ideas and learn from each other. We are already learning
how to bring information and resources to our neighborhoods and how to organize
cross-community meetings to share ideas and find common ground. In Santa Rosa,
we have organized “Homeless Talk”, a coalition taking the conversation on
homelessness out to neighborhoods and working to develop the kind of processes we
need to find common ground.
And we need transformed governments that understand that in
a democracy they have a primary responsibility to help citizens organize so
that they have a voice and role in the work of the city. Administrators and staff should bring
their expertise to us and partner with us to address our city’s concerns, not
just make decisions for us. In
Santa Rosa, with the leadership of our City Council and a new Director of
Community Engagement, we are poised to begin this transformation.
It is regrettable that we have had to experience the deepened
divisions and diminishment of democratic values that recent politics have
helped to create. But if this experience motivates us to work together to
rebuild our democratic community and create a democratic politics that helps to
bring us together, it will be worth it. Santa Rosa Together encourages all
local citizens to join us in these endeavors.
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