New Town Liberatory Visioning Project Aims to Make Community More Inclusive

As President Donald Trump wages war on the set of policies he derides as “DEI,” the Town of Amherst is renewing its commitment to diversity with a new initiative.

Over the next month, the Town of Amherst will implement the Liberatory Visioning Project, an initiative gathering community feedback with the aim of making the town a more inclusive environment. Barbara J. Love, professor emerita of social justice education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and anti-racist consultant, will lead the project.

The Town will host three dialogue sessions over the next month for residents to share their thoughts on, and possible solutions to, current issues of inclusion in Amherst. The first session will be held at Bangs Community Center on Feb. 27. The second will be held at Amherst Regional Middle School on March 5, while the last will take place at the Amherst Town Hall on March 12. An online survey is also available until March 14 for residents to provide their input. The feedback collected will be submitted to the Town to consider next steps.

The project was launched based on the recommendations of the Community Safety Working Group (CSWG), which was created by the Town to make recommendations on public safety and police reform in the aftermath of the 2020 George Floyd protests. In their final report, published in 2021, the CSWG, on the advice of Love, suggested the Town should “engage … in a liberatory visioning process" by seeking community input on manifestations of white supremacy in the area.

Pamela Young, director of the town’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) department, emphasized that the project had no predetermined course of action in mind. Instead, the Town was looking for a wide range of perspectives from as broad a swath of the Amherst community as possible, including college students.

“I think about this project as a funnel. So there is this wide-open call for everyone in the community to come and have an opportunity to talk about the Town of Amherst, local government, and what they think the priorities should be,” she said.

For Young, while the Liberatory Visioning Project may not be “out of [the ordinary for] what would be expected [in] this community,” the initiative has a special significance given Trump’s frequent attacks on policies related to DEI.

“We’re at a time nationally where I think there are great debates in this country about what government should look like, what its activities should be, how people are included or excluded,” Young said. “And so, if you think about this process in light of the national landscape, then I think it’s an extraordinary thing to be doing at this time.”