This is the summer of CCP meetings: the
CCP has been hosting meetings in the neighborhood of each proposed
Green Line Extension Project stop within Somerville. The Gilman Square
event was the sixth out of seven of such meetings.

As the
meeting began, I had an uneasy feeling that there were too many
community organizers and too few community members. Since CCP is a
collaboration between Groundwork Somerville, STEP (Somerville
Transportation Equity Partnership), Somerville Community Health Agenda,
and Somerville Community Corporation, there were a healthy dose of
representatives from these organizations. Members of Teen Empowerment,
as well as a contingent from Tufts University were also present.

But
maybe some of these community organization representatives are also
residents, I thought, optimistically. It was certainly true that the
members of Teen Empowerment had roots in the neighborhood…

Before
I could finish this train of thought, community residents began
trickling in. I breathed a sigh of relief. A community meeting without
community members would be a pretty dismal story to cover. As the
meeting started, there were about 15 or so neighborhood residents,
appearing to represent a diverse set of economic and ethnic
backgrounds.

Ellin Reisner from STEP and Janine Lotti from
Groundwork Somerville took turns leading the meeting, which consisted
of helping us focus our vision for the Gilman Square area in ten years,
when the proposed Gilman Square stop should be fully operational and
its effects felt throughout the community.

Early into the
meeting, I was surprised that Reisner asked each of us to participate
in a vision-quest. I was freaked out as she asked us to close our eyes
and imagine walking through the neighborhood ten years from now, on a
nice sunny day. A few of us did not close our eyes upon the first
request, and she had to politely ask us again. She continued by asking
us what we saw, smelled, and heard as we walked through the future
Gilman Square neighborhood.

Further research into The
Somerville News Archives revealed that this vision-quest was the
brainchild of Abi Vladeck, a summer intern at SCC, through Tuft's Tisch
College. In the end, I'm not sure if Abi's approach was any more
effective than simply asking us how we envisioned the neighborhood in
ten years. To be fair, the exercise did spark discussion and allow us
to engage in productive dialogue.

Residents were happy to
discuss their hopes and fears about the implementation of the proposed
stop: keeping businesses local, ensuring that low and moderate income
residents wouldn't be shoved out by insidious rent increases,
maintaining the local character, improving car traffic and pedestrian
conditions, ensuring planning for green spaces, public safety, and
reserving new jobs for the community were the main subjects brought up
during our conversation.

Both Reisner and Lotti did an
excellent job of distilling our organic discussions into focused themes
which they listed on a large paperboard for everyone to internalize.
Reisner explained that this initial series of CCP meetings was meant to
spark discussion and focus our vision, and that subsequent meetings
will focus more on turning these visions into concrete proposals that
will be presented to the state.

When asked why CCP had decided
not to include either the state or the city of Somerville in these
discussions, Reisner indicated that this community process was meant to
run in parallel with government initiatives, and that the CCP would be
ready to share its proposals with the government once they felt that
they were ready to adequately and articulately represent the concerns
and desires of the community.