By Nick Grabbe

A group of Amherst residents is concerned that public dialogue has become more personal and confrontational and is seeking ways to encourage constructive engagement.

Former State Senator Stan Rosenberg, acting as spokesman, said the non-partisan group came together before last year’s town election, after four School Committee members resigned in the wake of the controversy over the handling of bullying of trans students at the middle school. A public meeting is planned for January.

“We’re not telling anyone what to do,” Rosenberg said. “But we have things that might help the community renew our ability to speak clearly and forcefully about ideas in a way that encourages people to listen and work with each other instead of sending us to our corners.”

Pat Romney, who led public dialogues after the high school’s cancellation of “West Side Story” in 1999 and the vote to replace Town Meeting with a Town Council in 2018, is part of the group. Jan Klausner-Wise, Shalini Bahl-Milne and Tom Porter have also participated, as have numerous former Select Board, Town Meeting and School Committee members.

“We have expressed concern that the tone and tenor of public discussion and dialogue was not typical of the kind of engagement people were used to here,” Rosenberg said. Residents appearing before elected bodies, and in public letters, were getting more vituperative, and the families of public officials who were under attack felt “extremely uncomfortable,” he said.

Sometimes, the public chastising of officials has been not over the issue involved but about not using the right language or not being strong enough in their support, he said. “People who were used to speaking out stopped showing up for meetings,” he said.

Bahl-Milne described the group’s goal this way: “We can offer guidelines for productive dialogue and invite other suggestions to create an environment conducive to fostering understanding and creative thinking rather than aiming to win or change someone’s mind. It involves recognizing our shared humanity and interconnectedness, even when we hold differing viewpoints.”

Since the controversy over the treatment of trans students brought Amherst unwelcome national publicity last year, there have been vitriolic statements before elected officials on the Gaza war and the regional school budget. And Amherst has mirrored the polarization that afflicts national politics.

“It’s pretty much everywhere,” Rosenberg says. “Public engagement is going in the same direction in large swathes of the country. People, as soon as they find out you’re not in their camp, they don’t want to have conversations with you, and it can end in raised voices and rude behavior on both sides. It’s a big loss for our country that we are in this mess.”

Amherst residents have always been politically active, and strong expressions of opinion were common in Town Meeting. But Amherst became more divisive during the campaign to end it in 2016-18, resulting in a breakdown of trust.

“It was a process of winners and losers, and it created divisions,” Rosenberg said. “They healed very quickly in Easthampton, less so in Greenfield, but those new governments are now functioning as the new charters envisioned. Amherst is now in its sixth year, and we’re not out of the woods yet. People are still holding on to grudges that grew during the charter debate.”

This has made it very hard to find workable solutions to Amherst’s problems, he said.

“In my experience, if people lost the debate or things didn’t go their way, they didn’t pick up their ball and go home. They didn’t carry their grudge into the town square. The question is: What do you do when it’s over, do you go on to the next problem, or do you go to the sidelines and spend your political energy throwing stones at people who are trying to help solve problems?”

The group doesn’t have a name and is loosely organized. “We’re just concerned residents coming together to share ideas and encourage each other not to sit on the sidelines,” Rosenberg said. “If we’re just talking to people who already agree with us, we’re not getting anywhere,” Rosenberg said. “We want to create a community dialogue around public policy, in such a way that will help people learn how, in a divided environment, to engage constructively by improving their listening and communication skills.” 

The public meeting in January will not center around a particular issue. “It will offer the opportunity for people to come together to engage with people who are trainers and educators, who use techniques that can help public dialogue,” he said. 

At the January meeting, leaders will not ask what participants’ political affiliations are. Rather, the question will be “What is it about my life experience that led me to this position and what drives you to be in a different place on the same issue? How can we come to an understanding of each other’s point of view?”

Rosenberg encouraged residents who want to learn more or get involved to contact him at stan.c.rosenberg@gmail.com.

Nick Grabbe is a co-founder of The Amherst Current. He has been a resident of Amherst for nearly 40 years and served as writer and editor for the Amherst Bulletin and the Daily Hampshire Gazette 1980-2013.