I am pretty sure that it was history in the making. Local history, anyway. And, who knows? Maybe Mount Shasta's example will encourage other towns to take similar action.

Last Wednesday night, concurrent with the first snow of the season, a meeting between Shasta Commons and the Tea Party took place. While sleet and ice pounded the windows on the outside, warmth and understanding predominated in the meeting room inside.

Over the years, there have been some misunderstandings between the two groups. But, what is common to both groups is that we see our Constitutionally given right to life, liberty, and, the pursuit of happiness being taken away by a combination of Big Government and Big Corporate greed and control. Control belongs to the individual and the communities in which we reside. In other words we are capable of self-governance and taking care of ourselves and one another without Big Brother's interference. We see big government and big corporations in bed with one another and taking away our liberty. Our personal rights are being violated, whether it is the right to grow and sell our own food or property rights and water rights of our Siskiyou County farmers and ranchers.

The encroaching Corporate State has become so menacing that—tea or coffee preferences aside--we are now at the point where the left/right political lines are meaninglessness. We are all beginning to realize that there are only two real political options: de-centralized local control; or centralized big corporate-big business control. Everything else is a fictional choice: a distraction.

So, both Shasta Commons and the Tea Party are choosing local, decentralist models. They are agreeing to disagree on certain political issues, in order to come together in service to the local community. They are co-interested in the Constitutional freedoms long-ago promised to them. They are standing shoulder-to-shoulder to facilitate a resilient, thriving local community where people can feel supported as we all, together, weather the hard economic, environmental and energy storms that, invariably, lie ahead.

We could spend a lot of time bickering about political differences. And Big Corporate-Government interests have capitalized on that fact. They have spent decades, and fortunes, in keeping us all annoyed with—and suspicious of--one another. While we've been distracting—bickering about inconsequential political nuances—those same multinationals have purchased entitlements that have eroded a lot of our rights.

It doesn't matter whether we vote blue or red. We can talk about those things later. Right now, we're all concerned about some of the storm clouds forming on the horizon: the erosion of the freedoms granted us in the Bill of Rights, and policies impacting our choices about where and how we may live.

So, we decided not to bicker about inconsequential political nuances anymore. We're going to look each other in the eye, fully aware that we are neighbors, and do what is best for one another. We're going to realize that we all live here together and that it's only through our cooperative effort can we keep our little town strong and sturdy during hard times. We are going to be people who recognize the importance of individual freedom and the value of a functional, working community. Solidarity: divided we fall, united we stand.

Coffee and tea anyone?