TOWN MEETINGS . . . WERE THEY EVER A GOOD IDEA? CAN THEY BE REDEEMED?

On the face of it, they seem so logical and creative.  When something is “our” issue – a concern that belongs to and effects all of us, a common threat to address or shared opportunity to claim, when deliberation and making a decision would be timely – why not get us all together?  It seemed to have worked in colonial New England.  Official and unofficial.  Periodic, “as needed” or regularly scheduled: monthly, quarterly, annually, or when someone rang the church bell in the village square.  With authority to elect officials, pass budgets, enact legislation, make binding decisions, or simply a forum for exchange of ideas.  Then again, maybe they had raucous and rowdy gathering, unruly shouting matches, pushing and shoving too.

I only stayed for half an hour at this past summer’s nearby Health Care Town Meeting. Though likely more civil than many, when my stomach began to knot and a rare headache stirred, and the “discussion” (same root as “percussion” and “concussion”) heated up, and epithets and angry accusations began to fly, I was “outta there.”

As I have thought about it, I am not sure I have ever been to a Town Meeting that worked. I work as a consultant with religious congregations, all too often called in as conflict has arisen and escalated. “Let’s have a Town Meeting,” someone suggests, the idea seeming so obviously appropriate. “Just get us all together so we can hear each other out.” I used to concur, then came to resist, and now insist as persuasively as I can that it is a bad idea. Experience confirms the wisdom of my counsel.

I’ve attended Town Hall gatherings in small towns. It all seems so promising, as citizens pour into the hall. “We’re all together, how grand” is a logical thought. Not! How quickly pulse rate quicken, faces redden and neck veins protrude; everyone talking at once, voices rising to shouts and screams, arms flailing, fists clenched. An embattled moderator, one who came with presumed public respect, wisdom and authority loses any semblance of leadership.

I’ve attended congregational town halls at churches. Surely civility and mutual respect will reign there; people will express opinions in a reasonable and reasoned way. Not! I have overheard congregants, after a chaotic and fruitless Town Hall meeting, confess that they behaved in ways they would swiftly criticize in another, saying and doing things they never dreamed they were capable of.

There’s a lovely romance in that African saying: “If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Maybe there’s a way we can come together that we can go both quickly and far. Any movement needs to reach critical mass. Numbers are important. Crowds grew large enough to demolish “that wall” and Boston Tea Parties turned a tide in early colonial organizing. A first anti-Viet Nam war protest, five people parading down Fifth Avenue in New York, grew to tens of thousands, enough to finally end a war. Protesters faced snarling dogs and punishing water cannons, non-violently, and a civil rights movement gained momentum.

It seems that one of two prevailing spirits inhabits such gatherings – one of mutuality, common cause, respect in the face of differences; the other divisive and fracturing, anger morphing into hatred, vigorous exchange tumbling into animosity and assault.  As if a crowd develops a collective personality – either one of graciousness and unanimity, positivity and expectancy, innovation and forward momentum; or one of antagonism and negativity, obstructive and destructive.

Can the Town Meeting – rich with possibility, a platform for claiming common cause even amid inevitable differences, a launching place for creativity and positive change – be redeemed? To do so would be such a gift to ourselves.