All Island Forum Update

A month ago, I wrote about the coming All Island Forum event, Vashon: What matters to you? The meeting on February 27 was attended by about 65 Islanders, a nice mixture of new as well as familiar faces. All the participants were asked to write on a large piece of paper their response to a set of questions concerning a current assessment and future vision for Vashon. I found quite a few of the comments quite thoughtful and poignant. The questions and all their responses can be viewed at www.allislandforum.org

About ten days later, on March 8, a follow up meeting was held to reflect on the results of the first meeting and to decide where to go next. Twenty-one people, most of them attendees at the previous meeting, showed up to carry on the discussion. Although I was unable to attend that session, I can share with you Mary Shackelford’s report:

The primary impressions about the meeting as a whole were two. It was felt that the new meeting process was inviting and engaging, which was one of our highest hopes for that meeting. On the other hand, it was noted that there was a lack of diversity of attendees. Island constituencies not adequately represented included, among others, racial and ethnic groups, youth, conservatives, and commuters. The weekday evening time explains the lack of commuters and it was hoped that the others would come once we had earned some trust that the process was fair and that something constructive was happening.

With respect to the written comments, there was a sense that everyone was generally on the same page, although there were many different passions and a fountain of ideas. The most common themes were:

• Local self reliance and sustainability, i.e. growing our own food, growing/patronizing our own businesses, producing our own energy, etc.

• Appreciation of/ yearning for community/connectedness/ interdependence

• Concern for the environment

During another exercise, people were asked to connect up various aspects of our community that they felt were important. From these, other common themes appeared:

• Need for widely diverse group to participate

• Use of art as a means of expressing common feelings/aspirations

• A desire for interdependent, non-exploitive ways of working together

• We need to balance intangible expressions of emotion, spirituality, and creativity with concrete issues and concerns

• Split personality – wanting to reach out to each other while drawing in to protect what we have at the same time.

Overall conclusions:

• Relationships among us are all-important; we need to build trust before we can take concrete action. We need to reach out by making presentations to other groups rather that expecting them to come to us.

• The process is all-important. Further build trust by deepening the interactive meeting flow to give everybody the feeling that their ideas are being heard and considered.

• Focus on commonalities; we may find that we agree far more than we disagree.

• Need to tackle real issues or facilitate groups considering real issues and arriving at sound, broadly supported solutions.

There were a number of specific ideas presented that will be available to you at the above mentioned website.

All of this is very heartening to those of us proposing a transition to a more self reliant, sustainable Vashon. Those of you that attended the meetings have indicated that there is a strong focus on Vashon on exactly the right elements to get us where we need to go:

• That we need a strong and close community characterized by mutual respect and trust,

• That we need a process and a forum in place to establish and maintain that,

• That we must see to our own needs to as great an extent as possible; that we can’t expect the State or the County to be there for us,

• That we and our activities are inextricably a part of and dependent on the healthy natural life system/ ecology of our Islands and the region.

What is important now is that we continue this process, bring in more participants, and build credibility!

In my column last week, I referred you to the Yard Share website to connect up with gardeners or garden space. I’m sorry to say that the site was taken down after the recent sale of the carrier (Grouply) to another company. We weren’t even notified. Many of you wrote to express your interest and frustration. My wife, Elizabeth, spent many hours setting that up and is looking at starting all over. Until we have another site up, send your info and request to me at the email below, and I will try to pass that out to all of you that respond. You can make your needs known to each other and, hopefully, some of you will hook up. This is what resilience is all about!

Comments and requests: terry@vashonloop.com