Guest column: Pottstown council president addresses our ‘chaotic moment’

Editor’s Note: The following statement was made by Pottstown Borough President Dan Weand when he opened the March 5 borough council work session. It is published here with his permission.

I want to take a moment aside, before we start our meeting tonight, to address the uneasiness or anxiousness that I believe many of you may be feeling right now.

There’s no denying that our country and our world are going through a very difficult and, frankly, chaotic moment. And it doesn’t matter what side of the aisle you are on, or how you are registered to vote, or what things you believe in or don’t believe in. Society, and especially our media, are really driving this feeling of “you’re either on the winning side or the losing side,” and that, right there, is not helpful to anyone.

We all live in the same country, and in this case, we all live in the community of Pottstown. This isn’t my country versus your country or my Pottstown versus your Pottstown.

No. We are all living here together in our shared community. And I truly believe that we all really want what is best for everyone. We all want to succeed.

However, ultimately, we are going to have differences of opinion when it comes to how we should move forward. And it’s okay to have differences of opinion. It’s healthy to learn from one another.

But it’s not OK to be constantly screaming and yelling and making everyone feel that they are either winners of losers, and that you must take one side or another side, escalating these matters to the point where it becomes personal, rather than addressing the issues at hand.

And so, in order to be more productive and quite frankly, in order to keep our sanity, I hope Pottstown could be a model for other communities to follow, and then eventually, for the rest of our country to follow, in demonstrating that we can have differences of opinion, but we will talk through our differences, in rational, professional, calm and human ways.

And we need to find ways to work together in humane, dignified ways, even when we don’t agree with each other, so that we can continue to build a community where we all prosper.