Small towns offer potential for ethical and spiritual resolutions to government inertia

Crowd at annual food festival in Natchtioches, Louisiana

While people nationwide in the United States are annoyed with the inertia of the federal government, often it is at the grassroots where problems can be resolved and true mediation occur.  Two towns, one in the South and one in the West, are examples where that might be able to take place, as other areas of the country can examine their connections that could serve to ignite a new direction for government to function more responsively to the needs of ordinary people.

census rally in La Grande, Oregon - CF

Local communities have close common interests because there are fewer degrees of separation socially.  People have long-standing relationships and marriage among families that fosters permanent bonds.  Social connections and spiritual bonds are formed at church.  This means there is a strong platform for discussing community problems.

Political problems do occur in small towns, but that dissension ordinarily only goes just so far, because an angry tongue unleashed against a neighbor is felt not just in one's immediate neighborhood but reverberates across town.  The higher up the food chain of government, however, the less personal and direct the relationships are, making it easier for people to become hostile in prominent and more long-lasting ways than occur in small towns.

In local communities like Natchitoches, Louisiana and La Grande, Oregon there are not just long relationships but some "bad blood" between individuals and factions, the town politicians know that helping to effect resolution of problems will help the overall community interest.  It is difficult to side with one faction over the other because overlapping relationships too. 

The process of having good things begins with grassroots coalitions that support the growth upwards of benefits that exist for everyone.

Sometimes that mediation and reconciliation takes place in simple ways, when two people from diverse groups agree on a problem that affects the greater good.  It is easier to talk things out in small towns over a cup of coffee at the local coffee shop or on a park bench where two people can overlook the town and speak of the good things while sorting out the problems.

Can reconciliation and mediation truly take place in ways that work?  It did during integration in Natchitoches when quiet negotiations took place among black and white business and community leaders who had never been schooled together but knew each other by reputation or in passing at large gatherings, usually involving immediate physical needs.  These negoitations allowed integration to occur between the Steel Magnolia ancestors and those of Uncle Tom's cabin with little violence or recrimination.  Ben Johnson, a prominent African American businessman and Arthur Watson, the town's most high-profile attorney were two of those taking leadership in days where other places had serious violence during integration.  These men helped keep the town intact, the voices of hate and dissension down, that allowed black and white children to begin attending school together in relatively peaceful ways.

La Grande, Oregon developed from the settlement of various factions of predominantly European groups into Indian territory under harsh conditions.  Out of this settlement came negotiations that remain part of the town's underpinnings, the type that can serve the nation at a time it needs this type of effort the most.

In La Grande, the mediation with Native American groups made a difference in the life of the town, so that Indian blood in one's veins became valued, not denied as a way to succeed.  Sacajawea, who was the famous Native American woman accompanying the Lewis and Clark expedition on the Oregon trail that bonded Louisiana and Oregon in the Louisiana Purchase, is widely revered in La Grande where an apartment building, and once an old hotel, were named after her.

It is that type of movement that works towards mediation among individuals, small groups and small towns that is now required to move the larger community forward, when people of good faith, regardless of political view or religious affiliation, sit down together and examine the issues that are common to most folks in their daily lives.  These resolutions support the potential of a movement up the chain where major government entities now sit so far removed from ordinary folk they seldom understand the local community plight.

That's the root of anti-government feeling at a time when the nation needs better bonding as a shield against outside attack and the breakdown of the culture from within from drugs, crime and acts of hate.

With grassroots bonding and the work of coalitions that cross racial and political groups,  small towns like Natchitoches and La Grande will be able to take great steps in maintaining their economic base and likely can improve it by accenting their values in getting things done.  These are solutions of the spirit that many people understand because they live and work closely together.

Grassroots mediation and working together on common issues can improve local communities, but this process can also form the basis of improving government at the national level where it doesn't seem to work.  As Hillary Clinton wrote in a book with reference to the raising of children, "It takes a village."  In this case that village might mean small towns making a difference in getting people to communicate amicably so they are able to take the message to the state and national levels and restore civility to government.