David LaMotte, a singer/songwriter, author and peacemaker, shared a personal story with a group at First Presbyterian Church in Greenville about a sharp turn in the road where his house sat.
“I lived on a busy road, right on the corner. I lived on the corner of Cragmont Road and Cragmont Road because it turns really hard left right there; my house was right in the middle of that corner. Mufflers were not popular in my neighborhood. It was a loud corner. People came fast around that corner. There was no sidewalk on that road, and the traffic was pretty steady. So people didn't walk on the road, except for this one couple,” LaMotte said. “He was blind, and she and he would walk along the edge of the road. Every time I saw them, I was afraid it would be the last time I ever saw them because it was a dangerous road. But they kept agitating with the town to put a sidewalk in, and the town kept not doing it. Then one day, I looked out my front window, and there was a bobcat in my front yard tearing up my yard. I've never been so happy to see something like that because they were putting a sidewalk in.”
LaMotte said an amazing thing happened after the sidewalk was finished.
“People started pushing their baby carriages and walking their dogs, and after five or six times, people would ask the name of the dog, and maybe someday get to know the name of the person,” LaMotte said. “People start to get to know each other. It doesn't mean that we're now bosom buddies, and we know each other's life stories, but there are little tiny connections. And I'm here to tell you that when your tree falls in your neighbor's yard, those little tiny connections that you've had, the baseline positive feelings, make a really big difference.”
Sociologists call those connections soft ties, and the data shows that they do change a community.
LaMotte watched his neighborhood over the next few years become this really beautiful little community as he put it, and he loved it, but the story changed in 2016.
“I loved it more and more as it went on, but then in 2016, you may or may not remember, there was this election. I felt like the town had come in and torn out the sidewalk. All my neighbors were afraid to talk to each other again, they were afraid of the conflict, afraid of being judged or somehow hurt in some other way. Everybody just put their eyes down and walked by on the sidewalk, it broke my heart,” LaMotte said. I got really frustrated, one night I was sitting at the dinner table with my wife and my kid, and I said, you know, I just want to put a big sign on the front of our house that says: Look, no matter who you voted for, if your car battery dies, I will jump your battery. ”
He said he wanted to have that kind of community where people help each other out. “Somebody ought to make a sign like that, and then I realized I had said the fatal words. I had said somebody ought to,” LaMotte said. “Anytime you hear yourself say somebody oughta, the next thing that should occur to you is that you are somebody.”
Because of his background as a musician, he knew how and where to get signs made, so he did.
LaMotte sat with his wife and son and decided what they wanted to put on the sign.
The sign pictured above reads: No matter who you vote for, your skin color, your faith, or who you love, we will try to be here for you. That's what community means. Let's be neighbors.
“Now note that it does not say no matter all these things, everything's cool. Everything's not cool. We've got serious things to work on, the political decisions we make, in particular, people live and die by those decisions, they really matter. But transformation for all of us happens in the context of a relationship. We can't demand that people think like us in order to be in a relationship. First, we create the relationship. We treat people in a loving and respectful way. We learn each other's stories,” LaMotte said. “We don't have to convince each other to think differently, but we can remember each other's humanity, and in remembering each other's humanity, we remember our own. That opens space for conversation and transformation. I don't mean transformation that I change your mind. I mean transformation that we live fuller, richer lives in our community.”
On Christmas Eve, 2016, they nailed the 8 by 3-foot sign to the front of their house, which was not a subtle message on the busy corner.
“People started pulling into my driveway and taking pictures. People started driving real slow around the corner so they could read it, and occasionally somebody would say, ’Hey, I like that sign,’ or ’Can we talk for a minute?’ Which is what I wanted to have happen. We got to know people, and occasionally someone would come by because they needed something, and we were grateful for that.”
Then people started asking where they could get one, so LaMotte made a website with the art on it free to download so people could make their own sign.
“I didn't want anybody to think this was just a money-making thing for me, I wanted this message out there. So I made it for free, then people started saying, ‘I don't know how to have a sign made. Would you make some that you would sell to me?’ I said, I'd do that.”
Now some 9 years later you can purchase a completed sign and have it shipped directly to you. “But you can still download it for free,” LaMotte said. “Because that's important to me.”
Now the signs are hanging across the country, on churches, houses, and businesses.
“There's a 20-foot tall one on Abraham Lincoln's church in Springfield, Illinois. Right there above the door. It's absolutely astounding to me how that's gone out there. But it happened because of my frustration with this conflict in my own community,” LaMotte said. “I wanted to speak one small message that then threw ripples, and I think everything we do throws those kinds of ripples, whether we like it or not.”
