‘Good Trouble’ in Tough Times

Winchester Citizens Brainstorm Ways to Take Action

“Reaches for inclu­sion,” “the resilience of the Appalachian cul­ture,” and “start the good trou­ble” were all phras­es heard dur­ing the Good Trouble Makers’ Summit on Tuesday, Sept. 30, host­ed by the First Presbyterian Church of Winchester and spear­head­ed by the Humanists of Winchester. Participants in the event includ­ed indi­vid­u­als from the com­mu­ni­ty, local church­es, and oth­er orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing Emmanuel Episcopal Church and First Baptist Church.

The even­t’s name was inspired by the late, great John Lewis, who said, “Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trou­ble, nec­es­sary trouble.” 

Participants from all walks of life attend­ed, bring­ing con­cerns and hope­ful ideas for our com­mu­ni­ty. After a fun meet-and-greet activ­i­ty, they got down to busi­ness, answer­ing ques­tions like “What do you enjoy about your com­mu­ni­ty?” and, con­verse­ly, “What do you wish was bet­ter about your community?” 

The goal for this (and future) meet­ings was two-fold. First, to intro­duce our­selves to oth­er folks in the com­mu­ni­ty with a heart for mak­ing it bet­ter and tak­ing care of one anoth­er. Second, to walk away with action steps—things we can do indi­vid­u­al­ly every day that make a big dif­fer­ence when stacked up. The answers to many of the ques­tions by small­er break-out groups show this desire, from “find the baby steps” to one group’s insis­tence that “to have com­mu­ni­ty you have to show up.”

The Good Trouble Maker’s Summit, a cheeky name for a cheeky group, was filled with laugh­ter, intro­duc­tions, par­tic­i­pa­tion from all, and gen­uine con­cern and pas­sion for our com­mu­ni­ty. Winchester has many things going for it, such as being small enough to know its peo­ple and large enough to get what we need—but it is also fraught with issues. Some of these issues are uni­ver­sal, like sub­stance abuse, lack of infra­struc­ture for walk­ing and bik­ing from place to place, and a lack of afford­able housing. 

One par­tic­u­lar theme that kept com­ing up was how we wel­come new­com­ers and make them feel wel­come, point­ing them toward the resources they need to become inte­grat­ed into the com­mu­ni­ty. Suggestions for action steps ranged from the individual—reaching out to specif­i­cal­ly invite peo­ple instead of hav­ing a “come all” approach—to group-based ini­tia­tives, such as groups and pro­gram­ming intend­ed to show new­com­ers around, like a restau­rant sam­pling event. 

Organizers and par­tic­i­pants of the event left inspired and encour­aged, hav­ing met folks they didn’t know who were in this endeav­or togeth­er. Future meet­ings will focus on spe­cif­ic plans for indi­vid­ual issues, increas­ing the num­ber of voic­es in the room, and pos­si­bly adding child­care to reduce bar­ri­ers for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the discussions.