The Importance of Local Politics
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
- Local Government is far more important than most people give it credit for. More so than high levels of government, local politics affect our lives and shape the world around us.
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Local Governments provide a ton of services we all rely on every day. They plow our snow, they remove our sewage, in many places they provide our power. Do you like roads? If they're in a city or town, they were most likely paved by your municipal government. Ever been helped by the fire department? Those are city or county employees. Ever ridden public transit? You probably payed a fair, but it was available thanks to your local government. Unless you're a survivalist living in Alaska just waiting on the nucear apocalypse, it'd be pretty hard to go through your day without your local government.
Local Governments are much more responsive to your comments and concerns. For no cost but some of your time, you can go and attend City Council meetings. If there's an issue that you care about, there's a good chance that you will be able to speak to your council members about that. Unlike members of the US Government, it's not hard to even get a one on one meeting with most local politicians, which is pretty neat. Just call up their office, and see when they have time free. With our new technologies, it's even easier than it ever was in the past. If you have twitter or facebook, many local politicians have their own accounts, and will respond to you over social media. That means that you can literally participate in local politics while sitting on the toilet. I'm not saying that that's advisible, or sanitary, but that's how easy it is.
Local Governments have a large effect on the culture of the people that they serve. They are the rudder that guides the ship. A city government can choose to encourage or hamper the population growth of their municipality. They could decide to install bike lanes, or they can decide to increase the capacity of the roads. In some areas, the county can pick between dedicating funds to schools, jails or public transit. In addition to the decisions, many of the defining features of the places we live are there because the people and local governments of those places decided it should be so. Portland and Seattle are filled with public art thanks largely to their nifty public arts taxes. Las Vegas is going to be the new home of the Raiders, thanks to efforts from the Las Vegas City Government, and a public subsidy from the Nevada State Government. The famous New York Subway system exists today, thanks largely to the city and metropolitan governments. Our towns and cities would be unrecognizable if it were not for the people who served on their local governments, and the decisions they have made.
It's hard to remember how much of an effect our local politicians have on our lives. Even though it's easy for us to reach out to them, sometimes it can feel like they're a million miles away. We often only hear about them when something's wrong, and that can make it difficult to see how much they really do. When you put it all into perspective though, it's easy to see how important our Local Governments really are.
“Public libraries are totally lit.” I couldn’t agree more with that statement. 📚
how do you take over a local government
The same way a state party is taken over, just on a smaller scale:
1.) Make sure you're a registered member of the party you want to take over, and get to know some people within it if you can.
2.) Show up at a party meeting and elect candidates sympathetic to your cause as delegates. The reason the two parties are often very "out of touch" is because few people participate or even know about this process, so the shrinking pool of party insiders can chart their own course. I doubt you'd need more than 50 people to take over a midsize city.
3.) Your delegates are now the party bureaucracy. At the next convention, on the rules, platform, and primary committees, they will change the rules of the party, the policies in its platform, and the rules of the primary process, in your favor.
4.) Now that you've torn down the establishment roadblocks to outsider candidates and restored democracy within the party, run candidates you support in the next primary, and vote for them. Again, you don't need many people, turnout is typically very low because most people don't know anything about the local political process. A few thousand would do it in even the largest cities.
5.) Once your candidates win, which they will because your delegates at this point have hopefully exercised their power to decide how candidates get funded and which candidates get funded, your mayor/council/commissioners are legally the head of the local party. They have full power over it as the executives, with your delegates acting as the legislature (and in the case of the rules committee, the judiciary), and can complete the purge of the old guard. 100% of party members can be your supporters at this point if you want, though I personally wouldn't go that far because I think it would be an undemocratic abuse of power.
6.) Once you've taken over enough local parties, the delegates they each send to the state convention will also be your supporters. They will reform and take over the state party, and begin work to remake the state legislature via candidate selection and financing. Bernie Sanders supporters successfully did this to the California, Washington, and Oregon state Democratic parties.
*Most important:* Make sure you have an overwhelming majority of supporters at the state convention! The Sanders supporters in California only partially succeeded because they went to the convention with a narrow majority. They needed a supermajority to throw out the convention chair, strongly pro-Clinton and staunchly Centrist former Senator Barbara Boxer. They got plenty of their policies through, because they were still the majority, but are still fighting for control of the state party because Boxer was able to rig voice votes, prevent some proposals from coming to the floor, and hijack the platform committee. If the Sanders majority had been 60-40 instead of 52-48, Boxer wouldn't have made it through the first 5 minutes of the convention.
@@mrubuntuking5257 Epic response. You should make a 7 step video series covering this topic.
You are great! You should take more videos about anything!
Keep it up! Looking forward for more videos from you, don't stop!
Thanks duude.
how do my teachers find these video's
Share it with them!
Statistically speaking, probably from the TH-cam Search, though I get a lot of traffic from Google as well apparently!
@@bridgetownabridged I asked a question on this video about how to take over a local government, someone wrote a long comment explaining how. Do you think you could make a video on the action plan he laid out. I think many people would love to watch it. Just a content idea.
Good day sir.
STRONG TOWNS STRONG TOWNS
Great video bro, public libraries are lit.
thank you I'll share this with my students love it.
this is the most cringe video ever