Raw Democracy - The Neighborhood

      

My wife and I live in a great neighborhood. We love the history, our neighbors, our street, and the commitment of a large group of neighbors who are passionate about making it a great place to live. We can’t imagine living anywhere else in Fort Wayne.

The neighbors care deeply about the tree canopy that is under attack by the Emerald Ash Borer, the neighbors who need leaves raked and snow shoveled, the minor waves of vandalism and theft, and most recently, the opportunity to purchase some blighted property on one of the main streets in the neighborhood. There are no shortage of opportunities to connect over meals, plan the next event, or take on a project no one has extra time to work on.

I’ve learned over the past couple of years that the neighborhood is a powerful force. I believe the neighborhood and the neighborhood association is probably one of the rawest forms of democracy there is. This is probably why it get one of the worst reputations out there. We all have different opinions on the what’s important.

Sure, many of the conversations and important topics that surface within neighborhoods or the association meetings can seem like a burden or waste of time to sit through. But, this is precisely why I think it’s such a powerful force. You’ll never tap into passion and the hot topics of the people in a community until you start screwing with the place they live, their neighborhood. We also won’t influence someone else to get behind our idea if we don’t get behind theirs.

This is our life, our roots we’re planting. This is where we choose to spend the majority of our time. This is our home. We will protect our homes and the life we choose to make with all we got. To ignore the power of the neighborhood would be a bad idea. 

I’m learning that community or neighborhood development without the people is not development at all and most times will not be embraced.

As I mentioned above, there are two properties that have come available on one of the main streets in our neighborhood and a committee was formed to assess whether this is an opportunity the neighborhood association should jump on. The committee was formed in a matter of hours. Phone calls, emails, and several meetings later in just a few days had approximate 30 neighbors in the living room of one of our houses trying to take a vote on whether we should move forward. 

In just a few days, there were around 30 people that were passionately for, against, or uncertain of whether this was a good idea for the neighborhood to use our hard earned resources on. After an hour of conversation, a vote was taken and it was decided that the resources needed to buy and secure the property were more than we had, and at this time was not a good idea to do. 

I walked away thinking about how a small thing like some vacant property can unite neighbors to take a stand on improving the neighborhood and how easy they could shut down an idea if they wanted to. 

The power of a neighborhood that chooses to do good could also be the power to do harm. The power hangs in the balance of the willingness of people to listen to each other and have grace for different backgrounds and opinions. Our neighborhood has embraced it’s diversity and I think is a powerful reason why so many get along and are willing to work together.

We still have a lot of work to do in order to truly be diverse and rebuild some of the broken relationships of past projects or past leadership. At the core of it all, we’re all individuals who have the power to overcome our differences, apologize for our wrong doings, and forgive those who’ve hurt us in the process. Without work towards those things, we’ll just be a broken, un-reconciled group of people who stay inside all the time. 

That’s not any fun.