Democracy Needs Neighbors
Kicking off a new series of stories from everyday heroes + Why you should be a poll worker!
Hello Friends,
It’s been far too long since I last wrote to you all. My apologies.
Over the past 13 months I’ve searched for the words to describe the sheer gravity of the envrionmental repeals, recissions, and circumventions we’ve beared witness to. There is no easy way to explain it. No easy way to convey the weight of it. The mind isn’t well suited to hold the emergent complexity and magnitude of such things. Which is why courts have invented concepts like “ecocide” and “crimes against humanity.” Words to describe violations of life so malicious and indefensible, they are beyond our ready comprehension.
It’s not about waste. It’s not about fraud. It’s not about corruption. It’s not about freedom or choice. It’s not about protecting you or your family. It’s about power over people. A return to might makes right. A forging of new castes and kings.
It’s Billionaires vs. the rest of us. The more power they have, the less power we have.
Power is why they privitize and pollute our shared planetary inheiritance. Power is why they roll back our rights — our civil rights, voting rights, labor rights, reproductive rights, immigration rights, and our rights to a healthy environment, to water & sanitation, to food, to energy, and to health. Rights are our foundation of freedom.
The only remaining institutions with enough power to protect people and the planet from Billionaires are known colloquially as “governments.” Which is why this administration of Billionaires is dismantling our government. The foxes bought their way into the henhouse, and know their window of opportunity is short.
It is long past time for us to get organized and vote them all out. When democracy loses free and fair elections, it loses its most potent, peaceful defense against tyranny.
I and others in the environmental movement have come to the stark conclusion that free and fair elections are under threat. That last gasp of this failing Kakistocracy will be an attempt to steal the midterm elections. And if we are to be serious about environmental protection, we must mobilize to the defense of democracy, or risk losing the freedoms that afford us the ability to advocate in the first place.
We did not choose war. But we have been drafted into one. While some will respond in kind, I think there is plenty of room for neighbors to respond in kindness. Neighbors can and must learn to wage non-violence in many forms, daily.
Neighbors can be peacemakers and protectors. Neighbors can be cultivators and connectors. Neighbors can be grains of sand in hostile machinery, or mossy metabolizers of the charred remains. Neighbors can be healers, historians, writers, witnesses, conversationalists, cooks, community organizers, thinkers, tinkerers, and lovers. Neighbors can be many things, but they all must live in community with others.
“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be... This is the inter-related structure of reality.”
-Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Mutual liberation is the destination. And we can get there only by giving more than we take. I am blessed to be surrounded by ordinary heroes who give of themselves without expecting or waiting for anything in return. They are my colleagues, coworkers, and comrades in the climate movement. I am continually inspired by them. By the helpers.
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
―Fred Rogers
It is in that spirit I’d like to lift up and celebrate the everyday neighbors and heroes around me taking actions large and small in the defiant belief that a better world is still possible. Their stories, in their own words. A Green Neighbor Project, if you will.
First up, longtime volunteer and friend, Ali Renk sharing why she serves as a poll worker, and how you can become one too!
“Working as an election official has been a wonderful opportunity to support democracy in action, while getting to know my neighbors and community at a deeper level. Though the last few years have felt bleak at times, there is nothing more hopeful than the energy of election day!
As bad actors cast doubt and fear over the elections process, the best antidote is to see firsthand the numerous steps taken at each precinct to protect every citizen’s right to vote. There are so many safeguards to every role within an election precinct, and the care, integrity, and collaboration of election officials is really joyful to witness and be a part of.
I vote in every election and try to work each one as well - big and small. Local and statewide elections have a huge role to play in environmental protection.
With a president lining his pockets with taxpayer dollars, a congress failing entirely to meet the moment, and a supreme court fully in the pocket of large corporations, state and local elections have never been more important:
Governors have the ability to chart a state’s direction via PSC/PUC leadership appointees (in many states) and executive policy;
State legislators have the capacity to pass laws that regulate data centers, set fossil fuel reduction standards, establish and maintain environmental protection initiatives, and grant broader regulatory authority to reign in utilities; and
Local officials have jurisdiction over policy that could either entice or drive away data centers.
Because I care deeply about environmental protection, I care deeply about ensuring free and fair elections in which all citizens have the chance to vote. Serving as an elections official gives me a really wonderful opportunity to ensure that my neighbors feel safe, secure, and confident in doing so.”
To sign up or learn more about becoming a poll worker in local area:
If you’re in Wisconsin, or another state with upcoming primaries, please remember to vote not just for yourself, but for your most vulnerable neighbors as well:
If you wish there was a better way to keep up with the most important news each day, I can’t recommend Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American enough: