Guest opinion: Strong community can weather crises

If Hollywood gave us a dramatic, apocalyptic-style disaster movie that provided a story line that actually got the crisis resolved by a community’s citizenry pulling itself together in steadfast, old-fashioned ways, would anybody go see it?

Unlikely. That is apparently not the story of our time. We are told we want loner heroes blasting enemies while mere citizens scatter helplessly in a ruined landscape.

Two news items in The Spokesman-Review made me wonder, not for the first time, how have we gotten so many things wrong about achieving long-term goals of communities? One story rated how infrastructure would hold up if disaster struck, and the other was on personal survival gear. A certain voice was left out of those stories, and I would like to add it to any continuing dialogue. There are always multiple social narratives taking place, from the pathological to the affectionate. 

Of course, we should be concerned about the viability of our infrastructure because we depend upon it every day. And we want to be prepared for minor events to worst-case scenarios. Risk management is crucial, particularly in tough economic times. 

But resiliency and survival should be measured in community terms, not in the durability of concrete structures and the firepower of a handful of survivalists.

Here are a few comments from members of the Sustainability Task Force created in 2008 by the previous mayor:

  “Survival isn’t having the best gear, it is having the best garden,” wrote Mike Petersen. “Resiliency for our community is being able to rely on and trust each other, to come together as a community.”

  And this one from Katherine Rowden: “By protecting the local resources we have now (clean drinking water in the aquifer, the farm land we still have left), the less dependent we will be on support from outside our region, and the more resilient we will be.” 

“Resiliency is defined as a community’s (or system’s) ability to withstand shocks and outside pressures and to provide food, shelter, energy and mobility to its citizens in times of emergency or great change,” wrote Mary Carr. “It is a process of empowerment of systems and individuals within a community.” 

From Juliet Sinisterra: “To me, resilience really boils down to the idea of community self-reliance, where individuals and families have the skills and know-how to live in a self-sufficient manner, but still recognize that their well-being is interconnected with that of their neighbors, their local business community, and their local government. We are all in this together.”

 And from Susanne Croft: “Sustainability still means what it always meant: Will you still be able to do what you’re doing in the future? It’s just that nowadays you need to consider a wider range of factors and criteria than people used to think about in the past, from strong relationships to climate change and including a diversified local economy.”

I believe that there is a lot more work to be done to ensure we build upon our civic courage to gracefully endure unexpected hard times, from drought to terrorism, and not be distracted by those who want us fearful. Enduring so we can continue to provide for ourselves and nature, have meaningful livelihoods, create beauty, inspire and educate the young, care for the aged, and not live in a doomsday science fiction movie. And that work is actually going on, constantly, in healthy communities such as Spokane that connect people and reconnect with strategies and synergies of solutions for everyone.

Slowly but steadily our vital assets and resources and wealth-producing activities are becoming more diversified and distributed, from power generation to agriculture, in order to ensure self-reliant resilient responses providing redundancies if trouble does strike. These are self-sacrificing solutions that reflect the rewarding adult complexities of duty and gratitude toward one’s family, friends and neighbors, not adopting the role of a Hollywood action figure laden with ammo and attitude. 

It is about ideas and applying them for the benefit of all. One last quote, this from one of our nation’s greatest poets, Wendell Berry. He is making a reference to our culture’s current bleak leanings toward an inevitable collapse of society and the natural world, and the challenge placed upon each and every individual to move from being overwhelmed to taking on rewarding action. “It is the time’s discipline to think of the death of all living,” he writes, “and yet live.”