Supporting Local Resilience: Three Important Projects

Depending on where on the political spectrum you tend to be, you might see Big Government, Big Business or other “Bigs” as constraints on our ability, as a town and as residents of our community, to have more say over where we are headed in the future. I want to draw your attention to three Acton efforts that are focused on alternatives to dependence on the Bigs, and on finding ways to have more say over where we are going as a Town.

The first project is Acton 2020, the comprehensive community planning effort that has involved more than a thousand residents over the last four years. The bare requirement for a community plan comes from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is done only perfunctorily by some towns. In Acton, we have used this as an opportunity to dig down into the interconnections between our different but overlapping goals, find some common vision, and sort out how we might best get there. The first complete draft of the plan is now ready at http://acton2020.info. A public meeting on March 6 at Town Hall will review the plan and seek questions and comments; and at this April’s Town Meeting, we residents will be asked to consider whether the goals and objectives identified during the plan process reflect the town's wishes.

The second project is a Feb. 25 local presentation of “Democracy School,” a one-day course presented by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. This group is concerned with local control over the common resources that we all rely on, such as our air, water, and soil. These “commons” are not owned by anybody, but are subject to impacts by many activities. State and Federal laws and regulations sometimes leave towns out of the loop in protecting these critical resources from risk or harm. The Democracy School training teaches how local ordinances can provide protection for such resources, and explains how the history of legal protections for the commons in the U.S. has gone astray, often providing more protections for commerce than for public health. There's still room in the one-day class in Acton, on February 25 from 10am to 6pm. There's more information in this Patch article.

The last project is the Acton “Transition Study Group,” started by members of Green Acton. Transition initiatives are an international movement to support local residents in envisioning how their locality is going to get by as fossil fuels start to get more scarce and expensive. It includes a cookbook of ingredients for building local resilience — ways to connect residents, local businesses, and local government in cooperative projects. Such efforts might look to provide for basic needs: to be prepared to respond creatively (as the fossil-fuel economy starts to sputter) in response to climate change effects, shortages in the supply of fossil fuels, or both. The organizing approaches of a transition initiative support building local connections that will make Acton a stronger community, no matter what happens. More information can be found in this Patch article or at the Green Acton website.

 As the executive summary of the Acton 2020 plan says, “Actonians are pragmatic and smart. We see changes are coming and we want to find a positive future.” (Here's a link to the 13-page executive summary as a PDF) All of these efforts, and others going on about Acton, have this same goal of helping us have more say over our future. As we’re advised in a quote so good that it has been attributed variously to Alan Kay, Peter Drucker, and Abraham Lincoln, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” I encourage you to get engaged with any of these efforts — and help create your own future. Onward, Acton!