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A Tribute to Bob Silvestri and The Marin Post
In 2012, Bob Silvestri published a prescient account of the coming housing tsunami in his book titled, The Best Laid Plans: Our Planning and Affordable Challenges in Marin. He succinctly explained the gist of the book in the subtitle, "How regional planning is robbing communities of local control and threatening our chance for a sustainable future."
Journalist Dick Spotswood says in the Foreword, Bob Silvestri's The Best Laid Plans thoughtfully chronicles when the reformers' instinct goes mad. . . What Bob Silvestri has done is neatly and reasonably outline what undoubtedly will happen to much of suburban America if these blunt and misguided efforts at social engineering go unchallenged."
In 2013, after two decades of community involvement, Silvestri founded Community Venture Partners. CVP's mission is to facilitate and assist projects and initiatives that demonstrate the highest principles of economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
For ten years, the Marin Post has been a project of CVP. It has been the premier independent publishing platform in Marin and the San Francisco Bay Area, with readers from across the state and the country.
A few weeks ago, a Marin Post headline announced, With Regrets and Gratitude The Marin Post Will Cease Operations on June 18th.
It's a sad day for citizen journalism. The Marin Post will be deeply missed. It has been a go-to source for independent thinkers, writers, readers, statisticians, historians, economists, educators, activists, observers, elected officials, and community leaders.
Rather than focus on the loss, think of these words from Howard Zinn, American historian and social thinker (1922-2010), who Bob quotes at the beginning of another one of his books, Marin 2016: Dispatches from the Front.
What really matters are the countless small deeds of unknown people who lay the basis for the events of human history. These are the people who have made changes in the past; they are responsible for making change in the future, too. --Howard Zinn
Along with hundreds of other known and unknown people, we thank you, Bob, for all the times you patiently coached, edited, monitored, and published our articles and thereby created a collective treasure of the Voices of the Community. We pay tribute to you and wish you the best in your next endeavors.