Posted on by Gregory Fearon

Close to Home: Getting past partisanship to find solutions

By Lawrence Lehr and Hank Topper for Santa Rosa Together

slide image

After our recent election we find ourselves as divided as ever. In the face of so many challenges, can partisan efforts solve our problems? Doesn’t our experience indicate that we need an alternative to the rancor in our national political life?

Santa Rosa Together, a nonpartisan volunteer group, has been looking at local alternatives. We understand that we can only move forward by working together. If we want to overcome our divisions and unite our city, we will need to create a better politics.

Our experience is that despite our differences, we have more in common than not.

We are volunteers from all political persuasions and have been working together for eight years to improve our city. Whether right or left, we have gotten to know and respect each other, and we have learned how to work together.

Hank Topper
Hank Topper
Lawrence Lehr
Lawrence Lehr

Democratic citizens aren’t born, they’re developed through practicing democracy. Our politics should give us that practice by making participation accessible to everyone, including meeting with neighbors so we can get to know each other and take responsibility for our neighborhoods.

Let’s create strong neighborhood organizations in every part of our city, partnerships where we move beyond partisan allegiances, meet face to face and find common ground. Then, when our city needs to address a challenge, like creating the affordable housing we desperately need, let’s start the planning process in our neighborhoods.

Let’s give neighborhoods, the information and expertise to discuss issues and make informed decisions. Then let’s create the opportunity for neighborhoods to come together in citywide meetings to create the plan we need to address the challenge and take this plan to the City Council for approval and implementation.

Let’s make sure that every neighborhood has a role in implementation so that we can all contribute to the work. Neither government nor nongovernmental organizations can solve our problems by themselves. Our local governments would function much more effectively if they organized neighborhoods to guide and assist them.

Let’s transform city government from a cadre of experts doing things for us into an organization helping us get organized, and partnering with us to do the work of the city.

This isn’t rocket science, but it won’t be easy. Yet it could contribute greatly to overcoming our divisions.

We must get more engaged with each other and develop confidence in our ideas and ourselves. Wouldn’t this defuse the power of partisanship and help us find common values that would allow us to build a great city? Neighbors formulating common goals while learning from others is the way to build trust and accomplish great things.

Santa Rosa Together is working on opportunities to rebuild our politics.

The pending general plan update can begin the process of bringing residents together and strengthening our neighborhoods. We will start a citywide conversation to develop city charter amendments to define a new partnership between neighborhoods and government. And we will start a neighborhood building and youth engagement program to give residents opportunities to learn from each other and strengthen neighborhood organizations and civic institutions.

We believe that this is some of the most important work any of us can do right now. Let’s create a new model that revitalizes democracy for ourselves and our children and create a city that better reflects our deepest values. Contact us at santarosatogether.org and learn how you can help.

Hank Topper and Lawrence Lehr are members of Santa Rosa Together.

11,747 Replies to “Close to Home: Getting past partisanship to find solutions”

  1. Wonderful article! This is the kind of info that are
    meant to be shared across the internet. Disgrace on Google for no longer positioning this post higher!
    Come on over and consult with my website .

    Thanks =)

  2. Spyvio 10k Review

    Get This First-To-Market App To 1-Click Reverse Engineer
    Ads, Funnels & Emails From Any Successful Business Online

    + Unlock Proven & Profitable Campaigns From Top 100 Businesses Of 2020!

    FIND: Research, collect & store MORE profitable
    ads, funnels & emails of ALL your competitors

    PICK: Get instant access to 100 top businesses – their highest-earning funnels, emails and ad campaigns

    Spyvio 10k Review

  3. What Is Perpetual Income 365?
    Perpetual income 365 Review is a plug-and-play affiliate marketing software
    created by for all levels – newbies to advanced marketers,
    seeking to enable ordinary people who have zero internet experience
    make a full time income through affiliate marketing using our
    own plug-and-play system! The ultimate goal
    for us is to make you a healthy 5-figures recurring
    income promoting us while helping others
    achieve financial freedom at the same time.

    Perpetual income 365 Review

  7. Clickvio Commercial Review Groundbreaking Drag-and-Drop Email
    Builder Gets You 4x More Opens, Clicks & Profits With Your Existing Autoresponder

    Our Clients Doubled Their Opens & Increased Their Clicks By 400%

    Get More Sales Without Changing Your Current Autoresponder

    Smart Easy-To-Use Email Builder Which Multiples Opens &
    Clicks

    Clickvio Commercial Review

  9. Clickvio DFY Review Can you make a hurricane and congratulations and welcome to click.
    I’m delighted to see your hair because of the trust that you
    put in us pray. Is at The Cutting Edge of email marketing
    we are the first to market with the new email build the framework for better in boxing after having sent over 1 million emails
    through the background of Click view we know exactly what is needed
    to get your emails Landing weather sure I’m setting double click view you will notice an instant increase
    in boxing opens and clicks resulting in more sales Rochester with a built-in and
    you will be able to introduce Pettis Cassidy and even we target people that opened your
    emails in short you getting a fantastic deal which will only get better from today something that many people may miss out on giving you an advantage
    in your business now if you’re anything like me you will want more which makes sense because in my business of
    always look I’m always trying to find ways in which I
    can get more at a price that isn’t available anywhere else
    along with giving you a personal welcome I wanted to tell you
    about an opportunity that is only available right now on this
    page and this opportunity will guide your email marketing experience sure that you
    can max out revenues and customer engagement without anything holding you back simple math dictates

    Clickvio DFY Review

  10. With havin so much written content do you ever run into any issues of
    plagorism or copyright infringement? My website has a lot of exclusive content I’ve either created
    myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot
    of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement.
    Do you know any solutions to help reduce content from being ripped off?
    I’d genuinely appreciate it.

  13. Its like you learn my thoughts! You seem to grasp a lot
    approximately this, like you wrote the e-book in it or something.
    I think that you can do with a few p.c. to power the message home a
    bit, but instead of that, that is wonderful blog.

    A fantastic read. I will certainly be back.

  14. Ready for Thousands of Dollars of Value for Nothing?

    Grab the World’s New #1 Landing/Funnel and Sales Page System for Free (No Credit
    Card Needed Ever) and Discover How its Insane
    SEO Power Can Land You Commissions Fast

    Access to System for Nothing on Next Page (Nothing to Buy)
    SAS Affiliate – The Easy Way to Grab Commissions
    SAS Affiliate Review

    SAS Affiliate Review

  15. Unquestionably believe that which you said.

    Your favorite reason appeared to be on the web the simplest thing to be
    aware of. I say to you, I definitely get irked while people think
    about worries that they just do not know about. You managed to
    hit the nail upon the top and also defined out
    the whole thing without having side-effects , people could take a signal.
    Will probably be back to get more. Thanks

  18. Sendiio 2.0 Elite Review Sure again I’m in this video I want
    to simplify Your Role to send you a success and put you
    on the fast lane what if you can bypass all the technical set up of setting up your SMTP having to deal with
    settings in your C panel and having to install a snippet
    of code at cetera all the we walk you through every step of the process for setting up your SMTP would
    send you do inside of the members area it can still
    be quite a challenge if you’re not text Savvy with the agency account that you already purchased we also greatly recommend that you slowly warm up your account over time so
    that the IP address that you’ll be sending from doesn’t get blocked by the major
    email service providers and prevents your emails from being delivered but what if you can bypass all
    of that what if you can log in to send you and start using it right
    away by leveraging our Seasons IP address and SMTP server what
    that’s what I want to talk to you about in this video we
    built an entire selling system inside of sun deal with our own dedicated IP addresses and SMTP
    server that have already been warmed up and seasoned so that you
    can paint can be delivered directly into your subscribers inbox right out of the gate this means no
    messing around with any SMTP Integrations yourself know how
    to install any dkim the Mark or SPF code know having to set up a bounce removal email
    none of the technical set up that you’re crying with our agency account

    Sendiio 2.0 Elite Review

  20. Etkileşimi Arttırmak İçin Takipçi ve
    Beğeni Satın Almalısınız

    Özellikle yeni açılan sosyal medya hesaplarının en büyük sorunları arasında takipçi sayısının düşüklüğü
    ve paylaşımlarda etkileşim olmamasıdır. Beğeni ve yorumların gelmesi sosyal medya hesaplarının gelişimine katkı sağlamaktadır.

    Özellikle çok takipçisi bulunan ve paylaşımları
    beğenilerek yorum yapılan hesaplar ilgi çekmektedir.

    Takipçi Satın Al işlemleri sayesinde hızlı bir etkileşim sağlanabilmektedir.

    Ancak tüm hizmetlerde olduğu gibi bu hizmetlerinde farklı seçenekleri bulunmaktadır.

    https://rebrand.ly/takipci-satin-al

  23. With the Instapreneur Academy you’ll:
    Learn my proven Instagram growth system so you can grow 500-1000 followers per day which
    means you’ll never have to worry about not having enough followers

    ​Build a profitable Instagram business so you can reach
    financial independence which means you can fire
    your boss and break out of the 9-5 system

    Create content like the top 1% of influencers so you can get thousands of likes, comments,
    story views and followers which means you can make money doing what you love

    Instapreneur Academy Review

  24. How To DOMINATE A Virtually Untapped Marketplace And Create Your Own Professional App Within Minutes.

    Fast, Easy And Simple To Use!

    Works for any business – Want to sell mobile Apps to Online Coaches, Realtors, Cafes,
    Restaurants, Attorneys, Cafes and countless other businesses?

    This is for you.

    Select an Amazing template and fully customise with our ‘drag n drop’
    easy editor

    Build Local Apps – Sell access to your digital products & membership sites ‘in app’ and much more
    (Includes Apple, Android) PWA

    Get instant leads with our Done For You Agency Package – Including hot
    converting videos, landing pages, email attractions templates
    and much more.

    Zapable Master Membership Review

  27. Hey! Do you know if they make any plugins to assist with
    Search Engine Optimization? I’m trying to get my blog to rank for some targeted keywords but I’m
    not seeing very good results. If you know
    of any please share. Thanks!

  30. SEnuke TNG Pro Review You’ve invested your tie your money
    and have tried everything to get your website to the
    top of Google but still nothing seems to work to get
    Optimum Google Rankings today you need more than just
    a great website original content and proper on site as the
    yellow although on-site oil industry experts agree that
    today’s top ranking factors are quality backlinks click-through-rate and
    bells rang but to influence these traffic and engagement metrics and increase
    your sites rank you need more Google Keyword search visit more total
    site visits more page views longer site visit introducing Anthony nuke TNG but next generation of SEO
    automation since 2008 SE Boo has been the industry leader in automated back link creation now we’ve created even more powerful features that automated a fat wrecking factors to give you faster and easier page Google rankings as unique browsers module boost your website search CPR through the
    roof and drastically reduce your sights bounce rate automatically simply enter your URL and the keywords which the right for Etsy nuke t&g will then use its new proprietary crowd search process put on your
    search listings then visit your website
    and even its Pages the sheer power of this feature alone provides a clear-cut Advantage given you much more ranking and
    flew over your key words than any other available as the O’Toole even your competition will be struggling to discover how you
    took over their ranking so quickly it’s a nuke TNT
    also introduces many new rank dominating

    SEnuke TNG Pro Review

  34. Sendiio Pro Ag Review Want to finally build a CONSISTENT, Reliable AND

    long-term income with your online business?

    Instantly Access The First and ONLY Autoresponder That Allows You To
    Profit From The Power of Email, Text & FB Messenger Under ONE Central Dashboard With

    ZERO MONTHLY Fees!

    Sendiio Pro Ag Review

  37. Instantly Access The First and ONLY Autoresponder That Allows You To Profit From The Power of
    Email, Text & FB Messenger Under ONE Central Dashboard With
    ZERO MONTHLY FEES!
    Sendiio 2.0 Agency

    Create UNLIMITED Email Marketing Campaigns

    Create UNLIMITED Text Message Campaigns

    Create UNLIMITED Facebook Messenger Campaigns

    Easily Import UNLIMITED Emails AND Phone Numbers

    ZERO Monthly FEES During our Charter-members opening

    LIMITED-TIME BONUS: Agency Access Included

    NEW JVZOO Integration

    and much much more.. (read on below)

    Sendiio 2.0 Agency

  41. Hi would you mind stating which blog platform you’re working with?
    I’m looking to start my own blog soon but I’m having a difficult time choosing between BlogEngine/Wordpress/B2evolution and
    Drupal. The reason I ask is because your design seems different then most blogs and I’m looking for something unique.
    P.S Sorry for being off-topic but I had to ask!

  42. Zapable White Label Review Quickly if you’re interested in selling mobile apps to
    clients and want to add additional recurring streams of income for very little
    effort you should definitely consider our white label license
    package where you can give client login details under your
    ground notes apple and the ability to send push notifications charge a nice
    recurring fee and the best part is you got
    to do all this for doing very little extra work push notifications are one of the easiest of cells to jamming with hands-free caring and come from a client to Let’s jump over the computer and I’ll show
    you fight easy it is the shop that’s inside your cell phone account has been the most complete enterprise-level
    solution you ever need when it comes to stop codon I’m
    just really cool options which I’m just going to show you it’s actually incredible so if you look at the screen I’m just going to walk you through each
    step so you can actually customize what year r l tropical shoes on to this is actually showing it on a different to me like we do you say this I’m
    going to login see up here I’m just going to login it’s on my own two men missing if you want to start
    showing times so you may be thinking okay that’s
    pretty cool but I’m only just getting started with you see what else I
    can do so let’s just pop back and watch this customize my editor
    you can change the local the fabric on all the colors you
    can actually design any way you walked so I’m just going
    to change the logo real quick here new logo is added biscuit okay and then I’ll maybe change the background color I can change
    the text color I can change him say it’s all changing the way I
    want look at all this see the way I can change you can set this
    up anyway you want the choice is yours all easy super
    customizable okay and then whenever I accident it will see
    if I got to go back and

    Zapable White Label Review

  47. This is very interesting, You’re a very skilled
    blogger. I’ve joined your rss feed and look forward to seeking more of your wonderful post.
    Also, I’ve shared your site in my social networks!

  49. Clickvio Bundle Review In the next 5 minutes I
    will give you a clear roadmap to how you can build your list start sending emails for free and most importantly actually land this emails so they can click and turn into sales the best
    part but I will show you is perfectly compatible with Gmail Yahoo Hotmail and any other email client
    and you can do all of this with one simple change by the impact this would create in your business will be big-headed this is Neil Napier and before we go any further I will
    as you you know how important and profitable email
    marketing it is if you don’t just read the rest of this page we have used email marketing to
    build a profitable business just in the last 12 months we have them over
    1.5 million dollars in sales just as a product Creator then there’s another
    six pack in pure profit as an affiliate not our results weren’t always this good 19 was really bad for us for one major reasons
    our emails were getting lost in a messy inbox they were not Landing where they were supposed to
    and we were losing money even our best customers were complaining
    that they didn’t receive any email from us we tried everything we possibly could we try it expensive to respond this we tried hard and expensive
    copywriters we even begged our customers to open our emails and whitelist our email address this made a small difference but it just wasn’t
    good enough so we started researching and realized that there was a new
    way to do email marketing if we did this we wouldn’t need an expensive or to respond everybody need to hire expensive copy Rises and we need to
    beg someone by there in a few short months we went from getting 60% of our emails
    inboxed to as much as 97% if I emailed deliver it inboxed which in simple terms equals more options more

    Clickvio Bundle Review

  50. Einstein Trader Review today we’re taking a close look at
    a new EA called Einstein Trader this is a Forex robot by the same
    people that bought us million-dollar Pips over 5 years
    ago almost to the date so what’s good about this software what does it have
    to offer let’s go over to the website and take a look
    you can see here they have a nine and a half minute video and then they jump right into the proof we’re going to come back
    to this account so let’s just open it up and is a scroll down you could see they have six different accounts this is a lot of my FX book accounts that is
    extremely impressive that’s exactly what we’d like to see out of a for X
    robots especially in 2017 now one of the interesting things about the 4X genius traitor
    is that the onion Einstein Trader story is that they’re developed by the same people that brought us million-dollar Pips okay was the
    first person or the first development program did really took advantage of my FX book results
    they were the first company to provide these results and show Traders
    exactly how their software traded but there is an issue there because
    the million-dollar Prep Prep software did not
    actually perform very well on real account for the real clients so when we look at these accounts for the Einstein traitor we do have to be a
    little bit skeptical we have to hope that this software will outperform million-dollar pimps or not perform the same way we can see here that this software
    average trade length is 23 seconds this is extremely extremely
    short this is a scalper obviously and you can see some of the trades here

    Einstein Trader Review

Comments are closed.