For anyone who believes it not only is possible but morally mandated to improve the most vulnerable portions of our world, a community conversation in the middle of yesterday afternoon on the apron of City Hall would have been a most gratifying scene.
This was deeply dedicated American activism at work in its purest form, ordinary-appearing people, from runaround age young people to one of Culver City’s most venerable citizens, Margaret Lindgren, who is past 80 and does not look it.
From the remarkably committed to the shyly curious, several dozen persons came together in the Courtyard. They spread out blankets to make the cement at least feel slightly more comfortable. Convening in an orderly but informal semi-circle, the setting was a quintessential pictorial Norman Rockwell definition of Yankee grit at its exemplary best in the small corner of a technology-saturated planet.
Displays illustrating the perils caused by a massive plastic invasion greeted visitors to the Courtyard while youngsters and others not directly involved strung yards of plastic bags around the periphery of the meeting area to make an emphatic statement about their disapproval of the plastic plague.
Summoned by a group known as Transition Culver City, with Meghan Sahli-Wells and Michelle Weiner taking the lead, they met to decide how to most effectively cleanse Culver City and the Westside of the millions of carelessly strewn plastic bags and smaller pieces that they say are choking, if not irreparably harming, the planet, especially bodies of water.
(To be continued)
