AMHERST — Reconciliation among residents on opposite sides of the town charter debate is the aim of a community-building effort taking place next month.
Amherst Connects, whose organizers have a goal to bring together both supporters and opponents of the charter that ended representative Town Meeting in town, will be held at the Woodbury Room at the Jones Library, June 6, at 7:15 p.m.
It is the brainchild of two members of the Charter Commission, Nick Grabbe, a former reporter for the Gazette and editor for the Bulletin who supported the charter change, and Gerry Weiss, who works professionally as a clinical social worker and pscyhotherapist and who was against the charter change.
“We’re trying to knit the community together again,” Grabbe said.
Patricia Romney, a licensed clinical and organizational psychologist in Amherst who runs Romney Associates Inc., and Paula Green of Leverett, the founder of the Karuna Center for Peacebuilding who has traveled to the world’s hot spots to lead dialogues, including Rwanda, Bosnia, Israel, will coordinate the event.
“This is a rare opportunity for the community to come together with two facilitators who have a national and international reputation,” Grabbe said,
Grabbe said he recalls Romney’s work in 2000 with the controversy over the staging of “West Side Story” at Amherst Regional High School, where some students felt maligned by the content of the musical.
Green has recently been a leader in building bridges between Leverett residents, who voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, and residents from rural Kentucky who cast ballots largely for Donald Trump. Green was also involved in Northampton Connects, a dialogue related to the controversy over installation of surveillance cameras and the ways to keep the downtown safe, vibrant and welcoming.
Grabbe said Amherst Connects is not an opportunity to vent anger or reopen debate about whether it was the right decision to replace Town Meeting with a town council, but rather to talk about the common bonds residents have. The charter vote came a year after another major issue — the vote on a twin elementary school that would have replaced Wildwood and Fort River schools — divided the community.
“We’re hoping to get a lot of people and get an even mix of yes and no voters,” Grabbe said.
He has seen firsthand how division can affect people.
“I personally have had some strained relations because of people I know who are no voters,” Grabbe said.
The event could set the stage for the Nov. 6 election, when councilors will be elected about a month before the council is seated. Grabbe said it is important that people feel good about each other in the lead-up to that vote and that candidates from both sides of the charter question emerge to run for office.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
