{"id":7561,"date":"2020-07-06T08:10:53","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T08:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7561"},"modified":"2020-07-06T08:10:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T08:10:54","slug":"tree-hugger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7561","title":{"rendered":"Tree hugger"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
Ridgeway tree huggers\/Sandra Levy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How many times have you wanted to take action on a local\nissue that is bothering you \u2013 but done nothing about it? Well my interview with\nSandra Levy, damesnet contributor, is a reminder that anything is possible if\nwe put our minds to it. What follows are her words: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Stop destroying healthy trees in Brent\u2019 ran my petition to\nthe council. Whoah! Wasn\u2019t this a dream, or some type of Walter Mitty fantasy going\non here? No, I really was a 76-year-old grandmother with ME leading a petition\nto Brent council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t even \u2018another fine mess I\u2019ve got into\u2019 as I\u2019d never been involved in a petition in my life. It started on Nextdoor, with people whom I\u2019d never met (and mostly still haven\u2019t). We shared our horror at the idea of a whole street full of beautiful trees being destroyed for a repaving project. Having some writing experience I somehow offered to write the petition. It took months for people to agree the wording. Then fortunately an amazing woman came forward who had organised petitions before. She is a business consultant and mentored my every step. She knew what to send when, and where.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ridgeway Petition\/Sandra Levy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

And wow did I learn a lot, for example:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Many residents were happy to get rid of the\ntrees.<\/li>
  • Out of the many people on Nextdoor who were so\nconcerned with the wording of the petition, only one of them actually came\nforward to canvass for signatures alongside myself and the mentor.<\/li>
  • The council clearly had plan A and plan B. If no\none makes a fuss, plan A – a cheapo. If they do make a fuss, plan B \u2013 do it properly.\n<\/li>
  • You can send pictures to the local press before\nthe petition is complete. They publicised the petition using our photos.<\/li>
  • The council won\u2019t look at a petition like this\nunless there are 50 signatures from the street concerned. (Online petitions can\nbring in loads of signatures, but they could be from anywhere in the UK).<\/li>
  • At the last minute, scanning in the hard-won\nsignatures, we discovered no one had put their postcode (we hadn\u2019t thought of\nasking them). Yet we found out that a short street of 74 houses had 5 postcodes!\nThank goodness for the Royal Mail postcodes website.<\/li>
  • Finally, when I tried to email the petition to\nthe council, it kept being rejected, and I eventually found out that the Head Councillor\nhad 13 official email addresses.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n
    \"\"
    Ridgeway trees\/Sandra Levy<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

    The petition was finally submitted just before the Christmas\nweekend 2019 \u2013 no chance, I thought, of being read even until the New Year. But\nto my amazement the response came the next day, agreeing to our demands. Was\nthis a joke? But it was copied to so many people that I had to believe it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I had a strange feeling of exhilaration from having used my\nanger in a positive way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Eventually they did a great job of repaving (finishing just before the lockdown) – despite all their protestations throughout the whole process that it couldn\u2019t be done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I missed seeing the cherry trees this Spring as I was in full lockdown, but now when I go on my permitted walk I feel really happy, enjoy the trees anew each time, and don\u2019t have to trip over their roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If three of us could do this, so can anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    P.S. After this all happened an organisation was set up\ncalled Brent Trees which continues working with and collaborating continuously\nwith Brent Council; our petition was part of their first presentation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


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    I had a strange feeling of exhilaration from having used my anger in a positive way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,217,297,132,55],"tags":[76,218,19,133,97],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7561"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7579,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7561\/revisions\/7579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}