Published Monday, December 15, 2008 at 9:21 pm | Permalink
A small church hosts a lively community forum that brings the neighborhood together
Posted by Chuck Collins, November 6, 2008
Jamaica Plain, MA
On a Sunday night in March, more than 200 people huddled together in a two-century-old stone church in Boston to hear Canadian activist Maude Barlow speak about the global water crisis.
“Water is a commons,” Barlow said. “We must reclaim this commons from those who would treat it as a commodity.”
On any given Sunday morning in the same church, an average of 60 congregants fill the pews for worship services. When the church decided to create the Jamaica Plain Forum, they envisioned it as both a way to strengthen the church and to serve as a crossroads for important “community conversations about the great issues of our day, locally and globally.”
Early programs featured a variety of topics including local agriculture, the Iraq war, effective parenting, and preserving the neighborhood’s thriving independent business sector. Speakers included national experts and authors, but also “local heroes,” residents doing interesting work in the world. One forum was a “report back” by six local building-trades workers who spent two weeks volunteering in post-Katrina New Orleans.
In the fall, the J.P. Forum added regular documentary films and became a community viewing site for PBS’s Independent Lens series.
“There are so many remarkable documentary films that never see the light of day,” said Sarah Schwartz Sax, the coordinator of the Jamaica Plain Forum. “You either see them during the four days they are in a theater–or rent them and watch them alone in your house. We bring people together to watch and discuss these films; it is much more powerful.”
In the winter, the Jamaica Plain Forum instituted “Cheap Date Jamaica Plain” with timely speakers or movies, $5 childcare, and free popcorn. In their first year, over 3,000 people have attended 25 different talks and films.
“We’ve created a commons,” observed Schwartz Sax. “And most of what we talk about is protecting and expanding the commons.”
