Stating that Sudbury is Falling Apart Does Not Tell the Story

There is no longer a true sense of community in Sudbury. More recent studies have defined community as encompassing the following four elements:

1. membership
2. influence
3. integration and fulfillment of needs
4. shared emotional connection.

Clearly the events of the past couple of months have negated those elements and are in fact systemic of a larger problem borne out of political divisiveness and distrust of our leadership that we have nobody to blame for but ourselves. We as a community were apathetic for far too long. We, by not participating as a community in a process that was laid out over 200 years ago, have failed our children and our town.

While leaders are elected, trust of that leadership is earned. Some of our current leaders never had the trust of the majority of eligible voters in Sudbury, yet many of us stood ideally by while others elected them. It is certainly easy in hindsight to shake our heads, wring our hands and point fingers, but the reality is we put ourselves in this mess because so many of us failed to properly vet our candidates.

Fortunately, it is not too late to right the ship and effectuate the necessary change to get us back on course as a community, not a town divided. This should be a lesson for all of us to not take for granted that simple right granted to us.  I am just as complicit as many of you because I failed to participate on equal footing with those who been involved and attended meetings that affect all of us, especially our children.

I am disappointed in myself for failing to have my voice heard. That stops now and I hope that all of us who have this right take advantage of it going forward. Since it is clear that our leadership will never take responsibility for their poor decisions, the serious issues that have made this small town fodder for the local, state and national news will never be resolved unless we take responsibility for our own (in)action. 

Thus, the only way to effectuate the changes necessary to return this community to the one that I was raised in and chose to come back to with my family is to let our voices be heard both collectively and individually.