Dear ,

As our community moves into a discussion of how to become more safe, the Transition Initiative concept has something to offer. The Transition perspective seeks to recreate the best qualities of community connectedness that people had in the past. Our community safety has suffered a great deal from the loss of these.

The Transition approach makes it a practice to learn from the past in order to guide our current effort at re-building community. The Appletown Chronicles tells the story of how Croatian immigrants re-created community in their new home of Watsonville following their dislocation from their homeland. The book describes the custom of people visiting their neighbors in the era before television.

“‘As a result of these customs the community remained close, but it also meant that everyone knew everyone else's business,’ Andrew Mekis recalled. ‘If you were a teenager, and Mrs. Lasich saw you downtown at two p.m., your mother would know about it by three p.m.’”

There are powerful economic forces that have eroded community, including the end of the family wage, the decline in companies who employ people until retirement, the exodus from established urban neighborhoods brought about by the automobile, etc. Though our task starts with resisting the destruction of community by increasing our connection with our neighbors, it must extend to transforming our economy to make it responsive to local human needs. We envision a community where everyone has a place and no one slips through the cracks unnoticed.

Meanwhile, many of us are hungry for some practical steps to achieving a safe community. A new group with a positive perspective is forming, under the name “Together for a Safe Santa Cruz County.” You can sign on to their declaration which calls for implementing solutions that:

1. Address the root causes of the problems in addition to meeting immediate needs.
2. Identify and support evidence-based policies, strategies and programs that are cost-effective.
3. Produce measurable results toward short and long term public safety goals identified by all sectors of the community.
4. Ensure that all our community members are treated with equity, dignity and respect.