Saturday’s Metro story about the Inner Belt road protest of 50 years ago triggered so many memories (“Crowd commemorates 1969 protest that halted Inner Belt road project’’). The demonstrations were just a little too late to prevent the debacle that became Interstate 93 through Somerville, an action that split a community and set it in a direction that irreversibly changed the quality of life for so many. However, the action of a Republican governor, in concert with thousands of community activists, stopped the Inner Belt, and it will serve forever as a reminder of bipartisan efforts and what can happen when people join together to fight for what’s right.

It’s not such a huge leap to extrapolate to what can and must happen again today so that crowds in 2069 can celebrate us and our efforts.

Jim Bretta

Somerville