This week, I planned to highlight some major events coming up and tell you how you can get involved. However, due to a local policy update and a national tragedy, there is a very timely reminder I wanted to mention that is completely and totally unrelated to community events. Look for that in the second half of this column, but first, let me tell you about community building opportunities.

There are two great opportunities for you to help this weekend!

First, the Yarmouth Clam Festival, which, as you know, our chamber is helping with this year. As I write this on Monday of Clam Festival week, we are 45.3% full on our non-food booth volunteering, which is pretty good, and we have much further to go on our food booth volunteering (51 shifts open). Volunteering is a great way to meet literally thousands of people and some great local business leaders who are volunteering, too.

Volunteering for the Yarmouth Clam Festival in the food booth consists of three roles: register, prep and cooking. We’re doing a shore dinner booth, so the cooks will be helping make the seafood and other hot items. Prep volunteers help plate the food, scoop cole slaw, prep condiments, etc. Register volunteers are the customer service people, greeting guests and cashing them out either by using Square or cash.

Non-food volunteers at the Clam Festival are primarily asked to help at one of the two merch-info booths. At this booth, you sell T-shirts, hats, posters and raffle tickets. This booth is also a common place for people to ask, “Where is this and that?”, as the booth has event brochures, too.

To register to volunteer, either email cory@yarmouthmaine.org or sign up directly using the links found on the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber Facebook page (posted Monday). The Yarmouth Clam Festival opens this Friday, July, 19 at 10 a.m. and runs until 11 p.m., and then 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday.

The other huge event this weekend is Claws N’ Country, a one-day country music festival happening at the Brunswick Naval Aviation Museum on Brunswick Landing from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday, July 21, brought to you by Cook’s Lobster & Ale House in coordination with WPOR 101.9 FM. Lots of local businesses and chamber members are sponsoring and supporting this event, so you will see many of your friends there for sure.

If you’re interested in volunteering for Claws N’ Country, Jen and Nick from Cook’s would love some strong backs and eager volunteers. You can send an email to jen@cookslobster.com if you are interested in volunteering. The other way to support the event is to buy some tickets at the door. The more the merrier, as this is a fundraiser for the museum. For more information, find Claws N’ Country music festival on Facebook.

•  •  •

And now for something completely different, which involves both a local policy update, a tragic national news story and the narratives that get created. For 20 years, we have formed narratives before facts and then shown unwillingness to change the narrative when facts arise — that needs to end.

Let’s start with the Portland City Council, which, according to a policy alert I received last week, is looking to have two ballot initiatives on the November ballot: one to raise minimum wage to $20 per hour and the other to eliminate the tip credit for restaurants and bars. I guarantee in the lead up to this vote, you will hear a narrative disparaging business owners claiming they are “greedy” and “don’t care about their employees.”

This is not true. When an employer say, “I’d love to be able to afford this, but I cannot afford a $5 increase to minimum wage; I will need to raise my prices too much to cover it,” we need to listen to them. When servers and bartenders say, “We don’t want to eliminate the tip credit,” as they did in 2016, 2017 and several other times around the country since then, we need to believe them.

I know it’s inconvenient for those crafting a tip-credit elimination narrative when servers themselves, in overwhelming numbers (like above 90%–100%), have time and again said, “We like the way we are paid, please don’t eliminate the tip credit.” In fact, servers got together and formed a group in Maine that has gone nationwide called Restaurant Workers of America to fight this narrative.

When the facts don’t match the narrative, we shouldn’t believe the narrative. We should also ask, “Why isn’t the narrative changing in light of these new facts?”

Which brings me to the tragic events over the weekend in Pennsylvania and the heinous shooting. There is no room for violence in our political discourse. None. Period. Full stop. The assassination attempt of any political figure, let alone a nominee and former president, is a travesty and should be universally condemned (and has been for the most part, which is great to see).

Yet narratives have been spun, on both sides, before we have all the facts or even had the facts verified. In the coming weeks, we will hear more facts, and when we do, that must change the narrative.

When a narrative is formed that goes against the facts, that is fiction. Too often over the past 20 years in our siloed politics, we have not allowed facts to inform the narrative; we have instead seen too many instances of narratives regardless of facts. This needs to stop — our issues are too important to rely on fiction over facts. We need to be open to the truth over what we want to be true. To be fair, facts can also reaffirm a narrative as true, and that’s great, but the facts need to lead the narrative, not the other way around.

When the facts don’t match the narrative, we shouldn’t believe the narrative — and honestly, we should then become wary of that narrator, too.

Cory King is executive director of the Bath-Brunswick Regional Chamber of Commerce.