FPF is expanding beyond Burlington… we now serve one-third of Vermont.  More than 32,000 members participate in rural areas, suburbs, and cities.  Imagine this level of engagement in every part of Vermont and beyond!  Let us know if you’d like to help bring FPF to your town (just enter your address on our home page and complete the form).

Three cheers for the tens of thousands FPF members in Vermont… and here’s to vibrant neighborhoods in 2012!

A comment was made recently suggesting that Front Porch Forum be renamed the “Cambridge “roundabout” forum” because of the volume of responses the topic elicited.  I vehemently disagree!  I feel that this is EXACTLY why FPF was created.  Stimulating and fostering dialogue among LOCAL residents should be applauded!!!

FPF is an just a modern, electronic version of the conversations that used to take place in the feedstores, general stores, post offices, etc. that were the gathering places for inhabitants of the towns and villages of “old” Vermont.  To simply dismiss these important interactions, whether electronic or face-to-face, is missing a major part of what makes Vermont so unique and such a great place to live in!  Think of FPF as the conversations that take place before, during and after Town Meeting.  It provides those of us that are not fortunate enough to have jobs that allow us to attend Town Meeting and similar venues make our thoughts, ideas and concerns known.  How can this be a bad thing?

Let’s face it, the proposed roundabout will impact virtually all of us living in our town, now and well into the foreseeable future.  It’s probably the biggest point of discussion to hit here since the idea to re-establish a Cambridge High School several years back.  Why would we want to stifle it?  It’s a sign of a healthy, vibrant community!!!  What a great way for our governmental representatives to help to better understand what’s on our minds.

Leaving all of the decisions to our elected officials because they are “in the know” is a recipe for disaster!  Can you say “Iraq”?

So let’s continue to grow and contribute to FPF.  Consider it as an opportunity!

Thanks to e-Vermont for bringing FPF to Cambridge!

I wanted to extend a heartfelt thank you to my neighbors on Dion St who have cleared my driveway on several occasions this winter.  Your random act of kindness is so appreciated, thank you again and again!

It’s heartening to read about these kind actions and the gratitude of the recipients… especially as we head into Town Meeting Day, a time when debate among neighbors inevitably heats up.

Do neighbourhood websites have a positive social impact locally? For those who’ve suspected and long wanted convincing evidence, we think the wait is over.

The report of the Online neighbourhood networks study was launched yesterday during a lively conference in London…

Our study looked at three neighbourhood sites in London. The research shows that they serve to enhance the sense of belonging, democratic influence, neighbourliness and involvement in their area. Participants claim more positive attitudes towards public agencies where representatives of those agencies are engaging online.

We’ve produced a short (4-page) summary, an extended summary, a full report divided into digestible chunks, a selection of video interviews, together a number of other papers, and we will continue to add to these.

We see similar trends with Front Porch Forum in our pilot region.  That is, FPF members report… (1) better connection to neighbors and neighborhood, (2) a more prominent voice in local decision-making, (3) a friendlier environment, and (4) increased civic engagement.

Miscellaneous findings from the UK report…

95% – Feel more informed about neighborhood
92% – Neighbors are helpful if asked for advice
69% – Increased sense of belonging within neighborhood
92% – Useful information gets shared efficiently
82% – People pull together to improve neighborhood
63% – Main source of local news
44% – Neighbors more likely to lend items or exchange favors
42% – Met a neighbor
54% – More likely to see a neighbor you recognize due to website – Active member
14% – More likely to see a neighbor you recognize due to website – Passive member

This collection of materials is worth a close look!

But, as is becoming increasingly obvious, FPF is used in other ways too.  Local businesses, city employees, colleges and hospitals, charities and others use FPF every day to communicate with their communities.

Some local public officials enjoy wide access to FPF across many neighborhood forums.  This can create a heavy load of neighborhood-level conversation for them to keep up with… but a surprisingly high number do just that.  This just in from one State Rep…

FPF has made such a difference in creating a sense of neighborhoods. It does make more work and takes up more of our time, just like email actually, but its value way outweighs its demands, for me. I can’t tell you how many people during my door-knocking thanked me for my postings. Without FPF, I’d be hard-pressed to communicate with constituents.  So, really, a BIG thanks to all of you.

We thought Front Porch Forum was designed to trade information with neighbors, not to serve as one more place for people to post political editorials. Len’s piece in today’s forum, while well written, was out of place. Statewide and local election coverage is available through a plethora of channels and we did not sign up for FPF to be lectured at or editorialized to. We signed up to learn what our neighbors needed, and to share what we needed. Is this what we can expect from FPF? It is bad enough that the candidates invade our homes with phone calls at all hours without regard to whether or not we want to hear what they have to say.

And a neighbor countered with…

I would contend that FPF is exactly the place for an open discussion about all issues facing our community including political ones.  Why would a person read an editorial or a political post if it disturbs them?  I would suggest averting your eyes until you can scroll down to the next post.  I for one enjoy knowing different perspectives from my neighbors, including where the next garage sale will be and why certain politicians might be or might not be good for our town…

Good points all around.  Regardless, experience shows that, a day or two after the election, FPF will return to neighborly postings about lost cats, babysitters, car break-ins, helping neighbors in need, etc.

Last month, the city of Santa Rosa (CA) held a neighborhood summit to help people think through how they wanted residents, public officials, community organizations, and other stakeholders to work together. Jim Diers, former director of the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, gave a stemwinding keynote presentation that you can view here.

At four-thirty in the afternoon on Monday, February 1, 1960, four college students sat down at the lunch counter at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. They were freshmen at North Carolina A. & T., a black college a mile or so away.

“I’d like a cup of coffee, please,” one of the four, Ezell Blair, said to the waitress.

“We don’t serve Negroes here,” she replied.

The Woolworth’s lunch counter was a long L-shaped bar that could seat sixty-six people, with a standup snack bar at one end. The seats were for whites. The snack bar was for blacks. Another employee, a black woman who worked at the steam table, approached the students and tried to warn them away. “You’re acting stupid, ignorant!” she said. They didn’t move. Around five-thirty, the front doors to the store were locked. The four still didn’t move. Finally, they left by a side door. Outside, a small crowd had gathered, including a photographer from the Greensboro Record. “I’ll be back tomorrow with A. & T. College,” one of the students said.

By next morning, the protest had grown to twenty-seven men and four women, most from the same dormitory as the original four. The men were dressed in suits and ties. The students had brought their schoolwork, and studied as they sat at the counter. On Wednesday, students from Greensboro’s “Negro” secondary school, Dudley High, joined in, and the number of protesters swelled to eighty. By Thursday, the protesters numbered three hundred, including three white women, from the Greensboro campus of the University of North Carolina. By Saturday, the sit-in had reached six hundred. People spilled out onto the street. White teen-agers waved Confederate flags. Someone threw a firecracker. At noon, the A. & T. football team arrived. “Here comes the wrecking crew,” one of the white students shouted.

By the following Monday, sit-ins had spread to Winston-Salem, twenty-five miles away, and Durham, fifty miles away. The day after that, students at Fayetteville State Teachers College and at Johnson C. Smith College, in Charlotte, joined in, followed on Wednesday by students at St. Augustine’s College and Shaw University, in Raleigh. On Thursday and Friday, the protest crossed state lines, surfacing in Hampton and Portsmouth, Virginia, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, and in Chattanooga, Tennessee. By the end of the month, there were sit-ins throughout the South, as far west as Texas. “I asked every student I met what the first day of the sitdowns had been like on his campus,” the political theorist Michael Walzer wrote in Dissent. “The answer was always the same: ‘It was like a fever. Everyone wanted to go.’ ” Some seventy thousand students eventually took part. Thousands were arrested and untold thousands more radicalized. These events in the early sixties became a civil-rights war that engulfed the South for the rest of the decade—and it happened without e-mail, texting, Facebook, or Twitter.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell

After reading the reasonable and measured responses written by Mark and Jason to Maureen’s viewpoint on FPF usage, I was tempted to thank them both and let it go at that, but the more I thought about the subject, the more I wanted to add my two cents…

I’ve only lived in the Five Sisters for two years, but I’m grateful for the diversity of my neighbors and their opinions.  And, as all who’ve met me can attest, I’m not reluctant to express my own.  A community is defined by a collection of values, not always in agreement, but strengthened by the dynamics of discussion.  The central purpose of government is to bring stability to society, but it is the responsibility of the governed to continuously question government policies, with regard to current social attitudes.  If we shirk that responsibility, the government is no longer “of the people”.  (remember those words?).

Using Front Porch Forum only to borrow rakes or find the best electrician trivializes its potential and our community.  We don’t (or at least I don’t) live here because of our proximity to Lowes, or the many choices in refuse collection.  Although these are necessary and useful parts of our lives, they are the trivial parts. Let’s try to identify what is important to each of us to make the world a better place and work within our community to advance our ideas, either locally or globally.  To me respectful disagreement about philosophy and politics  is preferable to a low key social facade that isolates each of us within our own bubbles of self-consistent rationale.