LETTER: How to Behave Like an Adult on the Town Facebook Group

by Zachary Woodward

A child of Franklin in the '90s and aughts, I have recently found myself back in the place that's better than best (I still love that tune, Mr. Barrett) for the late summer and early fall. This return has led to many hours perusing the "All About Franklin" Facebook group. Here, community discussions are enlightening, heartening, useful, and sometimes funny.
They're also often shameful. When I graduated from Franklin High School in 2010, our town faced difficult budgetary decisions against a bitterly divisive national political landscape. Rarely did these aggravators lead adults to baselessly accuse neighbors of corruption, abdicate responsibility for community (or even personal) decisions, or complain without first attempting to understand. Now, all these are virtually guaranteed whenever the All About Franklin page touches on local politics.
Something has changed. Maybe it's social media. Maybe it's a COVID hangover. Maybe it's Trump, or Biden, or [insert your preferred national scapegoat]. Maybe we're just worse at self-governing than we used to be.
Whatever the cause of this breakdown, I present a few guidelines for discourse that I've personally tried to abide by wherever I've lived. You're free to adopt, ignore, or deride them as you see fit.
1. Try to refer to your local government in the first person. Municipal government is where we the citizens have the most influence and therefore where we the citizens have the most responsibility for decisions rendered. Our language should hold us accountable for such responsibility. "The Town Council [made this boneheaded decision]" obscures that we elected the councilmembers, we are supposed to advise them proactively, and we are charged with renewing or rejecting their employment. "Our Town Council decided" or better yet "We as a town decided" emphasizes our ownership of town decisions and reinforces our chief responsibility as citizens: ensure good governance. This phrasing forces you to associate with bad decisions, you say? Good. That’s the point. Now do something about it.
2. Write like you'll see the people you're talking about in Stop & Shop this week. Because you probably will!

3. Sometimes politics is local. Sometimes it's national. But almost never is the town Facebook group a good place to bash the candidate you're voting against this November. Yes, some D.C. or Boston decisions tie our town's hands. And other times, our town makes a decision that has nothing to do with state or federal policy. Please do your homework about why an unpopular town decision was made before deciding whom to blame and know that no one will be persuaded by a partisan screed in a comments section.
4. Before unleashing an opinion on the world, make sure it's informed. A) Recent high-rent apartment construction will worsen traffic. B) Recent high-rent apartment construction will slow the rise in housing costs. C) Recent high-rent apartment construction is pricing longtime residents out of the community. Two of these statements are sound arguments for or against new apartment construction. The other is a sentiment I see so often on the All About Franklin page but would land a student in serious trouble if she wrote it on an exam in the economics class FHS offered when I attended. Can you tell which statement is economical hogwash? Are you sure??? If not, there's no shame in reading up on the rudiments of a subject before chiming in on it. Let's disagree about goals and priorities, not about the basic laws of a market economy.
5. To the above point, some opinions—nay, emotional outbursts— are just on another level. A) If the Commonwealth hadn't spent $500 million housing migrants, that money could have done a lot for our schools. B) I didn't sign my child up for bus service on time, and it's ridiculous that the migrant kids have a ride to school when my child doesn't. One of these statements is an intelligent and compelling critique of migrant policy. The other reveals so much about the kind of parent and person you are. (To be clear, if you missed the bus deadline and took full ownership of your oversight, this paragraph is not about you.)
6. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and extraordinary action. Carl Sagan popularized that first part; I'm adding the extraordinary action part. If you (as I have so often seen) are going to accuse town leaders of "corruption," "fraud," or any other high sin, you sure as heck better 1) immediately produce the evidence to substantiate your claim and 2) devote your free time toward correcting the injustice. If you have suspicion that our town leaders are pocketing money, fixing elections, or otherwise engaging in bad behavior, why aren't you doing more to prove it? Pore through the budget line by line. Request the voter rolls and see if any dead people cast a ballot last election. Go door to door to gather petition signatures. You have ample tools to expose the corruption you claim exists and effect necessary change. Why are you making empty accusations instead of using those tools? (I think I know the answer. I think you know the answer too.)
7. Chill out, and love thy neighbor.
As previously stated, you're free to adopt, ignore, or deride these guidelines. Have at it, and happy posting.