By Liana Fedele
Number of SLF business members in Davis Square? 39.
Union Square? 53.
Magoun Square and East Somerville? 11.
(Numbers taken from A Local’s Guide To Somerville)
At the outset of my summer internship with Somerville Local First, somebody could have mentioned Winter Hill or Magoun Square, and they may as well have been talking about somewhere as distant as Timbuktu. My three years as a student in Somerville had made me moderately aware of Davis, Ball, and Teele Squares, but not much else. Settling in for a three-month stint as SLF’s Member Management Intern led me to a Somerville more diverse and intriguing than I ever imagined.
As my knowledge of Somerville grew, so did a project that’s been critical to my entire summer: increasing the diversity of SLF’s member base. Diversity might appear at first glance to be an empty buzz word muttered by college admission boards and corporate sensitivity handbooks, but to the local movement, it is of utmost importance. We’re Somerville Local First-not Union Local First, Davis Local First, or any other variation on this theme-and as such we must try to represent every angle of Somerville possible. To do this, I would choose to focus on geographic diversity across the ‘Ville, increasing SLF’s presence in East Somerville.
Try another side of Somerville on for size!
My “summer of diversity,” as I like to call it, started with a collaborative project. Working with The Welcome Project, one of SLF’s nonprofit members that seeks to support immigrant families, and its YUM initiative came naturally since Winter Hill and East Somerville have a heavy concentration of Somerville’s immigrant-owned restaurants (YUM’s focus). Casual meetings with immigrant business owners spread the local love and support. Vinny of Vinny’s Ristorante, a decades old East Somerville establishment, climbed on board the local train, proudly declaring Somerville as home to his business and his life. Many other business owners expressed a similar sentiment, a desire to intimately tie one’s business identity to its location.
This collaboration with YUM gave way to individual outreach that moved beyond immigrant-owned restaurants and focused on all of Winter Hill and East Somerville. Of course, the nature of being a small business owner does not always make it easy to devote time to the local endeavor. The word business itself implies as much; business owners are busy. Between serving customers and clients, balancing the books, and managing the whole joint, there’s not much time left to branch out to a wider audience of potential clients. Additionally, the nature of being an immigrant small-business owner can often be even more isolating. Regardless of service offered, goods sold, or language spoken, all of the businesses I visited wished to serve a broader range of Somerville customers. Suddenly, this whole diversification project took on a whole new meaning. It became clear that not only was my original goal of diversifying members important, but also that diversifying clientele was key to reaping the benefits of an inclusive local movement.
This is where SLF, ‘Villens, and, most importantly, you come in.
Why is it that the local movement seems to lack a presence that’s uniform across all of our neighborhoods? I can’t offer an exact explanation for the existence of a numerical inequality between Davis Square and Magoun Square. What I can offer is a request for your action, action that’s guaranteed to help bridge this gap. It’s known as the ancient art of exploration.
As community members of the ‘Ville, we must remember that Somerville is far more than just the sum of its parts. To support our city and its local movement is to embrace Somerville as a unified whole. When you take all the neighborhoods of Somerville and put them together you end up with a bustling and diverse business community to rival all others. Let’s get out and explore Somerville from every corner, street, square, and neighborhood possible. Let’s explore with a kind of gusto that will leave no local stone unturned. Now that’s what local pride is all about.
