~ An Introduction to the Good Community ~

Over the past dozen years, the phrase “The Good Community” has become a part of the lexicon of our town.  It represents the community we aspire to become. 

It began in 1995 with a conference on urban violence, which brought together individuals in leadership positions throughout the community to consider the growing tendencies toward violence in our community, as in most or all communities across the nation.  We had just had our first drive-by shootings.  Our first crack cocaine sold on our streets.  Urban gangs from larger cities, Chicago in particular, made their presence felt here.  And we had two young mothers, one with two small children, all slain ruthlessly in their bedrooms as they slept.  It was time for us to think about urban violence.

Out of that conference came an informal group of community leaders, who were intent upon addressing the root causes of urban violence.  Not long after the conference, Missouri State University invited noted sociologist Robert Bellah to come to town and speak to the topic “The Moral Crisis in American Public Life.”  (The text of his address may be found elsewhere on this site.)  Bellah had written a fine book titled The Good Society;  borrowing from that title our ad hoc group of leaders began to call itself “The Good Community Committee” (hereafter referred to as the GCC).

The GCC has endured since 1995.  It still consists of individuals, 35 to 40 of them, who are leaders in and representative of nearly all segments of the community.  The GCC has no office, no staff, no budget, no address, not even a phone number other than the home phone of its Chair.  It meets monthly, with the goal of leaving all separate agendas at the door and seeking together to find ways to move us closer to “The Good Community.”  It has no business to attend to, other than a periodic selection of a Chair and varying numbers of members to serve as an Executive Committee.  It has, therefore, an hour or more of leisure each month for members to talk with each other, to share ideas, to seek ways to address basic problems in our community and move it closer to our goals.

In its first year, the GCC articulated what it meant by a “Good Community.”  It is not an exhaustive list, nor an exclusive one.  It simply caught up our thinking.  We say that the community we aspire to become is a community in which…

• Every child has a family (or surrogate family when necessary) where he or she is cared for and loved.
   
• All children have access to the kind of education which builds character, citizenship and career skills, and which provides the understandings and skills necessary for making good choices.
   
• There is clear agreement on a basic set of values which are considered important enough to pass on to the children.
   
• People are safe in their homes and on the streets.
   
• Resources that make for health are within the reach of all.
   
• The lives of members are enriched by the arts and informed by the lessons of history.
   
• Individual initiative and effort are encouraged, and understood to find their highest fulfillment in generosity and service to the community.
   
• All citizens have a heart for work, there is rewarding and dignified employment for all who are able to work, and economic growth is linked to economic justice.
   
• All citizens take care to preserve the human habitat, and pass it on undiminished to future generations.
   
• There is a vigorous civil society, a productive market economy, and effective institutions of democratic government, and all three sectors work together with a shared vision of the community’s welfare and future.

Those are the elements of our aspirations and dream.  Perhaps they are not so much our goals as our compass.  The Good Community Committee sees itself only as one of many local groups and institutions working to move our community in this direction.

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