Self-organizing community responses

I am currently working with a small community which is having a serious problem with drugs among their youth. In a meeting with community leaders the same solutions came forward, most notably that the police need to enforce laws better (they don’t), the local government needs to do more (it won’t) and the dealers need to be run out of town (but no one will do it).

I suggested that, in the face of the evidence, none of these solutions are the magic bullet. So far none of what NEEDS to happen is actually happening. So what is the answer?

I am increasingly thinking that this small community is facing what many have identified as the fundamental problem with the global “war on terror.” A small number of unorganized people are wrecking havoc on the community and the organized structures (police, local government) are basically so mired in structure that they are unable to respond.

So what I am thinking is that a self-organized response is what is needed. The drug problem is essentially a self-organizing issue, with an unrestricted economy, drug use spreading like a viral meme and nobody in charge. The only way to beat the scourge is to self-organize against this. And so to this end, we have been considering using Open Space Technology to create a self-organized response to this problem, and we are starting with the community leadership group I work with. We have already started a little with people thinking about neighbourhood watch and other citizen based initiatives. The leadership group has also been working on larger and more systemic solutions to make the community more youth friendly and supportive of healthy behaviour, but these take a long time and the drugs are killing people right now.

What I’m curious about is whether or not anyone out there has seen examples of communities self-organizing to meet a self-organized or chaotic issue like this?