Happy Thanksgiving & Results of Last Monday's Canton Meeting

We are taking a break for the holidays and our next greater canton meeting will be Monday, Jan. 12th--please save the date on your calendars. From then on, meetings will be only on a monthly basis, on the first Monday of each month.

The canton meeting this past Monday, for those of you who couldn't make it, had some interesting revelations, noted below. We had a good turnout despite it being a holiday week, and again had several brand new people show up, including four new young people, who are just as fed up with how things are going in our neighborhood as the rest of us are. It was great to have that new energy at the meeting. The important things that came out of the meeting were a) more clarity with regard to the structure of cantons, subcommittees and the Steering Committee and how to move ideas and concerns most effectively through that structure, and b) Igho's exercise to demonstrate how critical it is to learn to tolerate and talk to many different personality types for successful community organizing--that is what it will require to reach out to the rest of the neighborhood and build a powerful coalition of neighbors in the West Ward.

The Steering Committee steers how the grant money will be spent. Here's how the structure works:

1. Individual cantons meet independently, whenever and as often as they want to.
2. Issues/ideas/requests from those canton meetings are communicated to the appropriate subcommittees, so that they will be discussed at their next meeting. Once a consensus is reached as to what to present to and how much to request from the Steering Committee, the subcommittee will do so at the next Steering Committee meeting.
3. The most important thing to do right now, is for canton members to join the subcommittees that deal with the issues that interest them most--then when we hold canton meetings, our concerns will be directly represented by our members on the subcommittees. The four subcommittes are:

1. Natural Resources
2. Human Resources & Public Safety
3. Economic Development
4. Neighborhood Physical Quality.

Sophia at the WWNP will be forwarding me contact information for the subcommittees soon and I will post the info as soon as I get it. So far, I know that Jeanette heads up the Neighborhood Physical Quality committee, and Maurice heads up the Natural Resources committee. If you are passionate about slumlords and code issues, contact Jeanette at h2hcombat@hotmail.com. If you are passionate about community gardens and shade trees, contact Maurice at msluker3rd@yahoo.com.

There are also 8 open positions for reps from the cantons to sit directly on the Steering Committee. So you can see how important it is to nominate our reps for these spots as soon as possible.

For more information on nominating canton reps for these crucial positions, please read the message from Igho in the post below.

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

Noel