Vashon-Maury Community Council’s President’s Address
By JC Graham
Since its inception in 1933, our community council has had its ups and downs. Periods of coherence have been followed by dysfunction, or even disintegration, before – some time later – a new form of Council has taken shape.
That’s what happened in 2022, when V-MCC was created as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, and again after last November’s annual meeting, when half of the six Board members resigned and our Council went into hiatus for seven months. (It resumed in July.) Since then, we’ve been rebuilding – bringing it back from the brink, really. Thanks to many volunteers, we’ve made great progress.
Yet even at its best, local democracy is a messy process. And that’s good!
In most civics textbooks, democracy is presented as a tidy machine for translating public opinion into law – checks and balances keeping excess and abuse in line. But in the real world, that picture has always been too static. A living democracy isn’t a machine that controls complexity; it is complexity maintaining its own coherence.
We’ve seen that here. During the recent government shutdown when SNAP payments were interrupted, Islanders spontaneously came together to meet the emergent need. Organizations and concerned individuals coordinated quickly to prevent hunger from stalking our Island – an adaptive response that brought us together.
At V-MCC’s November 20th meeting, we had a panel discussion on food security – part of that same response – to share up-to-date information and further a systemic approach to ensuring that no one on our Island goes without food. We’re also forming an action-oriented Food Security Committee to institutionalize the effort, and I warmly invite you to sign up.
In this and other ways, our world is changing, and we’re coming together to constructively adapt. It’s part of the joy of living here.
This is just one illustration of a deeper truth. Across nature and society alike, resilient systems survive not because they suppress change, but because they adapt through it. Think of our ecosystem: countless species in constant flux, yet the forest endures.
The same logic applies to democratic life. Debate, disagreement, activism, protest, and procedural friction are not signs of breakdown – they are the self-adjusting motions that keep the whole organism flexible and alive. When a community or a nation grows tense, such disputations are how it learns.
Authoritarian systems treat diversity and dissent as noise that must be stifled. Democracy, at its healthiest, treats them as signals – information about who we are and what must evolve next.
You might think of this as “coherence through variety.” The pattern holds not because everyone moves in lock-step, but because our differences teach us how to remain continuously connected – like a murmuration of starlings, each responding to the movements of others while still maintaining its own place in the flock.
In human terms, it means building enduring relationships of mutual respect that can survive disagreement and divergence.
And this isn’t abstract theory; it’s visible right here at home. Vashon-Maury Island is a microcosm of this principle. Our Island networks – farmers and artists, commuters and volunteers, business people, elders, activists, and youth, everyone – form a small but intricate ecosystem of values and voices.
Our Vashon–Maury Community Council doesn’t stand outside that complexity to manage it; it is part of it. Each meeting, motion, and debate is one of those adaptive pulses through which the Island’s coherence renews itself.
Recognizing democracy as a living, self-organizing system reframes the work ahead for V-MCC. Our goal isn’t simply order or consensus; it’s sustained adaptability – cultivating structures and processes that can listen, learn, and adjust as our community’s needs change – as we have done since 1933.
The implication is both hopeful and practical: if we treat variety as our lineage rather than a nuisance, the Island’s self-determination can evolve toward greater resilience. Complex adaptive systems thrive on participation – and in that sense, each citizen’s voice – your voice, even when discordant – is not noise in the process; it is the process.
Yes, we are stronger together – not because we are the same, but because we are different, each in our inimitable way. And because – with each of us contributing however we may – we are learning together how to live our democracy, collectively shaping the future in which, as Islanders, we’ll belong.
We are shaping a future where each of us has a place, where our differences are accepted, and where our community makes room for everyone. It’s not just a future that arrives; it’s one we create by living it forward, step by step – by showing up, speaking up, listening, and taking responsibility for this place we share.
So as we move into community conversations and the year ahead, I invite you not just to observe our local democracy, not just to be a spectator to the decisions that shape this island, but to inhabit it – and to make it your own.
JC Graham can be reached at President.v-mcc@proton.me.
