Bianca Diaz, your local community organizer here, and I am excited to introduce you to Uncompahgre Valley Alliance Communications Chair John English‘s first quarterly newsletter to recap the last three months! Take it away John!

Community is not an idealized abstraction — out there somewhere in the future. Community is right now, you and me. To have power, we have to grow our numbers. Yes, people power. Yes, a larger community has power — power to do things like develop a better public transit system, create good housing for all, and more.

Right now Uncompahgre Valley Alliance, in conjunction with All Points Transit (APT), is focusing on improving our public transit system based on our community listening over the past two years. Our public transit team has been investigating public transit solutions in other mountain and rural towns and created both a Spanish and English survey for APT patrons. We rode many of the different APT routes to ask those who use the service about their experience. To learn more about APT we attended The Forum where they gave a presentation. Finally, we attended an APT board meeting to formally introduce ourselves.

Pssst! Bianca again! If you haven’t taken the public bus before, you have a great opportunity through the rest of August. All rides are free courtesy of the “Zero Fare for Better Air” grant program.

We also have been at every Montrose Summer Music Series concert, a Montrose Pride event, and the Farmers Market. At the Farmers Market, I was surprised at the number and variety of stories people told about the need for public transit here. Some offered examples of other rural or mountain communities that have good public transit and were surprised and disappointed that Montrose does not. Yes, there is a crying need, and we are championing the cause.

Our leadership team and public transportation campaign team are working to increase our numbers. We talk with people at the Farmers Market, tell them who we are, and ask them to join with us to improve the community. We ride APT buses to find out what people need, let them know who we are and how we are helping them, and ask them to join us. We hosted a Membership Social on July 31 at 6 pm at Silver Basin Brewing and were so glad to share about our work. Thanks to all those who joined!

If each one of us brings just one person — a neighbor or a friend — we can double our numbers in just one event. We are a grassroots participatory organization. We operate in a democracy which means that numbers count. We mentioned a survey at the social: We want to hear from you and see how we can plan events that our membership wants to attend. Share your thoughts with us in this very brief Google Survey.

The problems in our community are obvious. Why do they fester without resolution? Because not enough people are doing anything about them. We can be the leaders, champions for a cause.

We are good people working to build people power. We’ve got a good start. Now we need everyone. As Bianca says, “All hands on deck!” to do a little something. Being a passive spectator accomplishes nothing. So, find someone who shares your desire to make things better here. Help them join us. You’ll feel good about it. They will be thrilled to have the opportunity to do something positive for the place they call home. Everyone wins with our Alliance!