The Falls Church City Council’s action to adopt a reasonable plan to allow and even incentivize affordable dwelling units, so-called “granny flats,” in the City by a unanimous 7-0 vote was a commendable and hopeful development. The process took almost a year, but with some singular exceptions, it was not as contentious and hostile as the years’ long tortured process that led to a transitional zone modifications which, as we are discovering, has not yet led to an armageddon.

With the assault on the very core of the Northern Virginia, or greater D.C., region through its vast federal and federal contractor cutbacks and firings, the Trump administration has generated a profound call to arms for local jurisdictions and the state to stiffen resolve and to move to creative and effective mitigation efforts. Area U.S. congressmen like Falls Church’s own Don Beyer and Fairfax’s Gerry Connolly have been champions in the as-yet frustrating effort to stir greater resistance in the U.S. Congress. All taken together, the sign of a more congenial effort at compromise and consensus in local governments like Falls Church’s is exemplary of this growing unity of resistance and constructive countermeasures.

 In his address to the Falls Church Chamber of Commerce this week, Rep. Beyer conceded that he has been unable to identify any serious efforts toward a collaboration by Democrats and potentially anti- or non-Trump Republicans on Capital Hill. Yet to us, this has to be the pathway to a serious change from the highly perilous situation that now exists not only for this region, but for the nation as a whole and the world. Objective reality has to be combined with relentless persistence to begin to crack open the fearing souls of enough relatively reasonable Republicans to achieve this.

Regrettably, due to Trump, conditions can be expected to worsen for average citizens at all levels in the U.S. in the coming months. But this can create the opportunity for a new kind of cross–party alliance, as envisioned by the fledgling “Abundance” movement that Falls Church’s Mayor Letty Hardi and Council member Justine Underhill were invited to explore in San Francisco recently (as reported in the News-Press two weeks ago). By next year’s midterm elections, there could even be robust counter movement against Trumpism in the GOP that could, among other things, target the worst pro-Trumpers in Congress to be “primaried” by reasonable same-party foes. Such would be a much welcomed turning of the tables.

In the spirit of the Abundance effort, we suggest that a cross-party team work up a 10-point statement of shared principles that it can go out to the public with, offering hope in the midst of increasing chaos and misery not only in Virginia in its gubernatorial and state delegate elections this year, but in the all-important midterms across the nation next year. The impulse tendency of the American populace to rise up against Trump will be amplified and extended by such an approach.