The Importance of Community Activism
March 23rd, 2005This article was written by Christopher Holcroft, vice-chair of the BWVRA. Reprinted with permission from the Village Gleaner. This originally appeared in the March 2005
issue.
I believe in participatory democracy. I believe in community activism. These are our rights, and I believe we have a responsibility to exercise them.
It is something I learned at an early age from my parents, who were both very involved in a number of community, charitable and political activities in my hometown of Belleville.
And it was, in part, a history of community activism that drew my wife and I to the Bloor West Village neighbourhood three years ago.
It is now what drives my participation in a new community organization, the Bloor West Village Residents Association (BWVRA).
The BWVRA will exist to serve the community, to keep residents informed of important and relevant information and to organize public meetings to provide a forum for ideas.
Now some may argue that sending out newsletters and organizing so-called town hall meetings to learn about and debate the key issues of the day is the responsibility of our locally elected politicians. While true, it is also the responsibility of all citizens to engage themselves in the public discourse, by using any number of a variety of avenues. Those avenues could include joining a residents association, a political party, or a community action group, attending a neighbourhood meeting or an election debate.
We all have issues that motivate us or public policies that concern us. Yet acting on them has become increasingly unlikely for a lot of us. This is evidenced most clearly by the unexpectedly low voter turnout in recent elections concerning all three levels of government. Read more »
