Opinion By Laura Draucker, Clare Bertrand, and MaryAnn Grim

The Amherst Forward leadership, of which we are a part, has announced that we will be wrapping up operations of Amherst Forward over the coming months. 

Amherst Forward began in 2018 to encourage and support candidates to run for our new town council who shared our 4 key priorities: balanced development, infrastructure to support town needs, deeper civic participation, and thriving public schools. Over the last 4 elections our priorities and work remained the same – we sought to identify and help elect thoughtful, pragmatic town councilors and to keep our electorate informed. We provided community members with information about candidates during the election cycle, and to share critical updates or opportunities to engage on our priority issues throughout the year.

With 8 years behind us, we can look back with pride as to what we helped support – a new form of government filled with dedicated individuals sacrificing many hours to serve our community. This includes candidates we endorsed, and those that we did not – we are thankful for them all. We have also recognized that while our priorities are as important as ever, the work of the council has become more complicated and nuanced. At the same time, our leadership team members have moved, gotten new jobs or caretaking responsibilities, or simply needed to reprioritize how they spend their time. As a result, we can no longer follow the details of the council closely enough to provide timely and thoughtful updates to our community. 

Therefore, we are stepping back now to let the next wave of Amherst residents fill the void in their own way – we still need more candidates to run for office and to sit on committees, and we need to put a stop to personal attacks that hurt our chances of having contested elections in the future. We need to have the hard conversations about budgets, infrastructure projects, development, and housing. We need to be willing to entertain all ideas without judgement or assumptions about motives. We need to avoid echo chambers that make us suspicious of our neighbors. We need to focus on moving forward. 

We thank everyone who supported Amherst Forward over the years: folks who made $1-a-week donations (our limit), helped canvas, phone bank, poll watch, organize literature, and all the other tasks required to support a robust election.  We could not have done any of this without you. 

While this might be the end of one chapter, we hope this motivates others to start the next one – whether that’s running for office, volunteering for a committee, or stepping into our footsteps.