Building Community Future’s Happening Right Where You Live

A virus is going around. It goes around every election season. It’s called cynicism.

Sufferers break out in a rash at the word “politics.” Their sleep is disturbed by nightmares about special interests. They experience high levels of anxiety over their powerlessness to deal with community issues.

There’s a vaccine for the afflicted, but you won’t find it in the halls of government. You have to go into the neighborhoods, starting with your own.

Spokane’s residential areas are brimming with encouraging tales of civic accomplishment credited to concerned citizens. Many of them were celebrated three weeks ago when the City Council held its weekly meeting at the Northeast Community Center.

From volunteers patrolling their neighborhoods to discourage criminal activity, to agencies and individuals creating a model day care training facility, to residents teaming up to help an elderly neighbor maintain his yard and home, civic involvement is a bustling reality in Spokane.

Neighborhood activists have never felt so empowered, according to Bill Dillon, who, as director of the Northeast Community Center, works with them every day.

Such optimism contradicts the impressions of disinterest created by alarmingly low voter turnout percentages. But campaigns and elections are only one slice of the political life of a community.

Far greater in scope and duration are the neighborhood responses that occur over zoning challenges, traffic patterns, public safety concerns and an endless variety of other tests that communities must face.

At its best, such activism draws on a neighborhood’s internal strengths as a resource for problem-solving, rather than dwelling on its deficiencies as a means of attracting outsiders’ sympathy and help.

Fed by citizen interest, public and private entities are responding as critical partners. The Institute for Neighborhood Leadership imparts key political skills to grass-roots activists. City Hall has launched a neighborhood council program that has eight recognized councils on board already and more on the way. Enterprises such as Safeco Insurance, Holy Family Hospital and others have teamed with neighborhood groups to make self-help projects achievable.

At times, unfortunately, those who hold more traditional leadership positions in the community bristle when they see the activists coming. That’s too bad.

“We create radicalism when we deny entry into the decision-making process,” according to Dillon.

But the reverse is equally true. Opening the doors to civic participation strengthens the civic capital of the community and enables political collaboration.

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