Community Initiatives/Port Townsend
Local 2020, Port Townsend, Washington
Submitted by Frank Hoffman
Port Townsend is a rural, seaport community on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. There are about 27,000 people in the entire county. It's on Puget Sound, with views of the Olympic and Cascade mountain ranges. It's a pretty place, attractive to tourists and retirees. The paper plant is still a large employer and fishing boats still work out of the port.
Inspired by Brian Weller's (WELL) description of economic localisation efforts in Willits, CA, the founders of the Port Townsend EarthDay Everyday festival and the Jefferson Energy Council helped formed Local 20/20. Our mission is: Working together to create a thriving local culture that balances economy, ecology and community.
Local 20/20 quickly evolved into 12 Action Groups:
- Shelter
- Transportation
- Food/Agriculture
- Water
- Economic Localisation
- Emergency Preparedness
- Health and Wellness
- Community Outreach
- Wild Areas
- Energy
- Waste and Recycling
- Giving Back
People have been moving back and forth among the groups trying to find a right fit of interest and personalities.
Local 20/20 has been hosting a community brown bag lunch meeting the fourth Friday of each month since January, 2006. A "Steering Committee", composed mainly of a liaison from each Action Group, also meets once a month.
The large, monthly, public meetings have been work-centered as each Action Group works to establish goals we can accomplish in 12 months. At the February meeting we conducted a workshop mapping our communities existing assets to provide a common method for each group to learn what resources already exist. Once the assets are mapped, each group will look for opportunities to strengthen or build upon those existing resources. The concern or interest that each group shares is sustainability.
We decided to publicly "launch" Local 20/20 into the community on April 22, 2006 the Saturday before the community Earthday Everyday festival, because one of our goals is to create Earth Day everyday.
The week before, a member of Local 20/20 sponsored a workshop by Michael Shuman (author of Going Local: Creating Self-Reliant Communities in a Global Age), who talked primarily about how to create local economies that lead to sustainable communities. He was joined by Michelle Long from Bellingham, WA. She is the Executive Director for Sustainable Connections, a group of business people working to develop environmentally sustainable practices themselves and campaigning to get their community to "Think Local, Buy Local, Be Local". The workshops were well attended by a diverse audience including local business people, local government people, permaculture activists, and environmentalists
April 21, the day before the launch, David Korten gave a well attended talk in a local High School auditorium, based on his new book, The Great Turning: From Empire to Eartg Community. His engaging presentation increased interest in the Local 20/20 launch the following day.
We had developed two panels for the launch that would explain what the overall Local 20/20 is about and the focus of each action group. The Earthday organisers rented a meeting hall for us and publicised the launch as part of their advertising for the Earthday event. We showed the films, The End of Surburbia and The Salmon People, that evening in the same building. The next day, we had a booth at the Earthday Everyday event in the community stadium.
The launch also included the first in a series of Local 20/20 sponsored Emergency Preparedness workshops. We get earthquakes here!
Our goals for this launch were to create interest in sustainable practices, to recruit members to help with the work and to let the community see who we are. There is interest in creating a sustainable community, the event was well attended, people did sign up to help. This success has given us the energy to keep moving forward!