Town Meeting Intensified

The Town Meeting Campaign began with a goal of having one Town Meeting in every county of the United States.  However, some states intensified that goal, such as Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas.  In Chicago, Illinois Kitty Cole and Georgiana McBurney led the “Standing Tall in the 80s campaign that offered forums to each of Chicago’s 77 communities.

Mississippi 200

Illinois

Town Meeting Comprehensive Report 1974-1978, May 1978
IL Town Compendium of Results, 1976.
IL Report First 40 Town Meetings, 1976
Town Meeting Promotional Materials, 1975-6

Oklahoma 100

Texas 100

Talks given at Town Meetings/ Community Forums: The Future of Town Meeting”; Keys to Urban Victory, Don Clark 1976;  A Compendium of Talks/Reports 1976, “Profound Awakenment” by Joseph Mathews 1977, “The New World” by Don Raschke at the Kemper Town Meeting 1975; George Holcombe at Clarksburg, West Virginia Town Meeting; “The New Human”, Lyn Mathews, March 1975

  • Town Meeting Report to US Department of Housing and Urban Development, September 1978
  • What is Town Meeting, Joseph Mathew, July 17, 1975

Town Meetings in Other Nations

  • Canada: Eastern Canadian Community Forums were being done by dozens of us who would meet on prescribed weekends at the Montreal Religious House, where we would share stories, chart our progress of “coloring the provinces gold, county-by-county”, and strategize. We worked together as an Area Montreal Team, going to New Brunswick; Quebec; the Maritime Provinces; Ontario. Great fun, hard work. Meanwhile, others enabled our efforts by double-jobbing, parenting our youth, and otherwise enabling the program effort.

    The first counties we went after in Quebec were the big ones, like Chicoutimi County, which I think includes the North Pole! If we could do a Community Forum there, we reasoned, we could golden one-third of our provincial map! Back together we came, weekend after exhausting weeks, sharing our experiences and plotting our next steps. One weekend, I somehow got assigned to set up Community Forums in the ten Counties of the Gaspe Peninsula. I was expected to in-kind a car, and to travel with Francine Paridis from Great Falls, New Brunswick. Totally on faith, she accepted this anglophone from the U.S.A. as her guide. Together we drove counter-clockwise around the Peninsula, staying at church rectories, often starting our dialogue with the parish priest who was in good position to call the entire village together for a meeting. We always used the French language. In the beginning, it was Francine interpreting every thought, every question, every response between the priest and me. As we went on, it was Francine making the pitch and occasionally stopping to ‘catch me up’ on the parts of the conversation that I could not understand. No one felt more pride than I felt, unless it was Francine, when the last of those ten Gaspe Counties was finally colored gold. It was certainly not all through our two efforts, but our souls were merged to the outcome.

    Another weekend, Gregg Harris, then Prior of the Montreal House, announced to the gathered team that one of the great honors of the Rendez-vous Quebec campaign was the assignment of the two person team to conduct the Forum Communautaire on the island county of Iles de la Madeleine (Magdalen Island) in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence off the Gaspe Peninsula. When my name was given, along with Lucille Tessier’s name, I nearly fainted. Our journey to the island required two short plane flights–one between the Gaspe towns of Rimouski and Gaspe City, the other from Gaspe City to the island. We took off from the Rimouski airport ina small,12-or-so-passenger plane; there was no divider between the passengers and the crew. About a minute after we were airborne, I looked at the rightwing, and saw smoke coming from a metal cap. When I looked at the other wing and saw no smoke, I tapped the co-pilot on the shoulder and asked him why. He then had a brief talk with the pilot, and the next thing that happened was that the plane made a 180 degree turn back to the Rimouski airport. We landed; a conference between the air and land crews resulted in something being done to the smoking wing. We were soon airborne again, and it was then that the pilot told us that a mechanic had difficulty screwing on the fuel cap, so he had removed the rubber gasket, and that was allowing fuel to seep out of the opening. Told by Jim Slotta, Denver

  • Marshall Islands:  Town Meetings Report: Diamond of the Pacific, 1976
Exit mobile version