How the struggle to protect one small town can share lessons for solving America’s converging health, racial, economic, democracy, and climate crises
By Dominic Frongillo
One evening, as the golden sun warmed the summer evening air, I was riding my bike down old Creamery Road to a Town Council meeting in the little hamlet of Slaterville Springs. As I coasted past the green waving fields of the Town of Caroline, I looked around at the beautiful countryside and the rolling hills that stretched for miles.
This was my home. I was born and raised here. As a child, I rode my bike past these fields, looked up to stare into the brilliant stars at night, and laid in the snow in the quiet fields in winter. I walked with my mom up and down the road, carrying a bag and picking up cans and bottles that people threw out their car windows. From my mom, I learned to care for our land and community.
Now, a decade later, I was publicly entrusted to serve my community, elected to office at 22 years old as the youngest-ever member of the Caroline Town Council.
Caroline is a rural historic farming community in the northernmost region of Appalachia, on the watershed divide between the St. Lawrence and Susquehanna rivers. Founded 200 years ago on the ancestral lands of the Onondaga of the Haudensaunee, settlers logged and farmed the land. Families are still farming after seven generations.
As the golden fields and rolling hills ran to the horizon in the humid air, I felt an expansive emotion: love, caring, and responsibility. I thought about the deeper meaning of my oath of office, how I shared responsibility for everything happened to our community.
“We are stewards,” I thought.
ENTRUSTED TO STEWARD
Locking up my bike, I walked into the Caroline Town Hall, a large old two-room schoolhouse. Old black and white portraits of past town council members and notables hung on the walls. In the courtroom, the public who came to meetings sat in long wooden benches that were once church pews. Council members sat around a large wooden table.
Now, for a time, I sat around this table, an elected representative in this oldest and most humble home of American democracy: a country town hall.
In moments of reflection, I was keenly aware that as an elected official, I shared a profound responsibility. We were entrusted to serve by the voters to make decisions, raise taxes, and pass laws that affected every person living and working in our town.
We must consider everyone in and every possible impact of our decisions. I was entrusted to consider and act in the best interests of everyone, not only individual people who elected me or one political party, but all the people affected by our decisions, especially people who cannot vote, children and elderly. The weight of that responsibility was immense.
Yet, our decisions impacted far beyond only people. The farm fields, the streams, the forests, the aquifers, and all the animals and life that lived here were impacted by our decisions but did not get a vote. To be truly inclusive and democratic, I thought, should we not also represent and consider every living being’s interests in our deliberations?
Our decisions also carry consequences far into the future, and we must care for what we inherit from the past. Thus, our responsibility extends throughout time: taking care of the present and protecting our town for generations far into the future.
It hit me that the deeper meaning, the highest calling of being an elected representative was the fulfilling the trust to care for and protect for the future — to be stewards.
We are here only for a moment and must accept the torch from the past and carry to hand off to the next people who will be entrusted with the sacred responsibility. If we, as elected officials, were not being a steward of our entire town, with considerations for all, and weighing the consequences of our decisions far into the future, then who was? What must we do to fulfill this responsibility?
Little did I know where these questions would lead.
FROM TOWN HALL TO UNITED NATIONS
While I was in office, I noticed the weather began to change. In winter, the snowpack became lighter. In summer, streams began running dry. Rainfall, once gentle, now came in heavy downpours, cutting deep ruts cutting through our dirt road. We were hit by two 100-year storms in five years. A tornado ripped off the room of our mayor’s mother’s house.
I began reading climate science that reported an accelerating crisis. When a science paper projected that the arctic may be ice free by 2100, I was shocked. How could the geologic face of our planet change so quickly? Then a new report came out projecting it would happen by 2050. Then a new report said 2034. Then five to seven years.
What does stewardship mean in the face of threats from far beyond our borders?
Growing alarmed, I traveled to the United Nations climate negotiations in Bali and Copenhagen. Amid the glare of news cameras and delegates from nearly two hundred nations, I learned that the US is the chief block in solving the climate crisis. It uses its influence to divide, delay, and undermine global action. At private briefings, members of Congress and Obama EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said, “The real action is not here. It’s at home. For America to lead in the world, you must create the political will to act in the United States.”
When I returned from the United Nations, I asked “What’s the biggest thing we can do to mobilize action?” With my friends Shawn Lindabury, Kimberley Schrader, and Sarah Brylinski who were students, we hatched an idea to deliver an energy-saving CFL lightbulb to every household in Caroline — in a single day. We planned for months, and on D-Day (Distribution Day), 100 volunteers went door-to-door by hybrid car, foot, bicycle, and even horseback.
Our initiative Energy Independent Caroline brought oldtimers and newcomers together around a community vision for rural energy independence, clean wind power, and home-grown healthy food.
Working with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s visionary leader Ken Schlather, we then scaled up our efforts, organizing 1,000 volunteers to go door-to-door to deliver 15,000 CFLs across seven other communities — in three hours. We calculated that if every home used the lightbulb we gave them, it would save $1 million in energy. Support began to build for a clean energy economy.
One night, I awoke with a terrible nightmare. In my dream, a giant super tornado, with dark clouds perhaps a mile across, was bearing down on my town, destroying everything in its path, roaring over the hillside forest towards my childhood home. I awoke in a sweat, with terror. What could we do to stop the oncoming storm?
The front lines of the climate crisis seemed far away: in the mountaintops of Appalachia, where companies they blew the tops of mountains to extract coal. Or in the arboreal forests of Alberta, where they created the largest industrial project on Earth to extract low-grade tar sands. Or the Gulf of Mexico, where, dill ocean drilling two miles beneath the ocean. The efforts to stop the expansion of fossil fuels that were driving the climate crisis seemed distant from our quiet, peaceful town.
In 2011, that suddenly changed.
GROUND ZERO
One sunny warm day, I rode my bicycle down our dirt road. The birds were chirping in the green fields, with my tires crunching on the gravel as I slowed at the bottom of the road.
As I turned onto the main road, what I saw absolutely shocked me: a convoy of massive trucks, driving slowly on the shoulder of the road.
The trucks were huge, painted all white, unmarked, with out-of-state license plates. It looked like an invasion of multinational corporate military contracting vehicles from Iraq. I felt a mix of indignation and fear. Underneath the trucks, huge round disks hovered above the ground.
“Seismic testing,” I thought. I felt an ominous feeling. “What were they doing in our town, amid our quiet rolling green fields and forests? What are they looking for?”
The answer came within months —in the mail. Large envelopes arrived with offers for gas drilling leases. Yellow tabs marking the highlighted signature lines: “just sign here.” The companies targeted our vulnerable farmers and elerly landowners, who needed the extra income. Soon, we learned 55% of our town’s land was leased for drilling.
Then, we started hearing strange stories from our neighbors across the border in Pennsylvania: children suddenly getting sick, farm animals dying, water from the tap you could light on fire. We learned a new term: hydraulic fracturing — fracking.
This wasn’t your grandmother’s gas drilling.
We learned that Bush and Cheny’s Energy Policy Act of 2005 exempted the oil and gas industry from the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Community Protection and Right to Know Act. This “Halliburton loophole” effectively gutted health and environmental protections, turning the United States into a third-world country for environmental regulations.
Traveled across the border in Pennsylvania, our citizens saw first hand how fracking transformed rural communities. Farm towns were now industrial zones, with hundreds of huge trucks tearing up the roads and bridges. Rising rents and crime rates followed out-of-state gas workers, shuttering local businesses.
We learned about the toxic chemicals used in fracking: arsenic, toluene, benzene. Aquifers and wells contaminated with toxic carcinogens, neurotoxins, and radioactive wastewater.
Caroline and upstate New York had become the new ground zero for the expansion of extreme fossil fuel extraction.
Growing alarmed, our citizens learned that the gas industry quietly pushed through new laws in New York State that enabled companies to drill under your lands without your consent. Lawyers advised that the state alone regulated gas drilling and we were powerless to stop it. Our citizens despaired ,ther
One night at a community dinner, a mother broke into tears. She said her family had bought a beautiful house and hoped to raise her children here. Now, her family lived in fear of toxic fracking and how trucks would make it unsafe. Heartbroken and afraid, she was thinking of selling their house and moving elsewhere to protect her family.
RESIST
Despite the hopeless situation, a small group of our citizens refused to give up. Around kitchen tables, they decided they must take a stand against the massive oil and gas industry, that we can no longer keep retreating from the fossil fuel industry. Resolving to organize and resist, their named their group Residents Opposed to Unsafe Shalegas Extraction or ROUSE.
The group soon swelled from seven to 70 people. Going door to door, they carried a petition asking our town council to investigate the possibility of prohibiting fracking. It was a long shot. When neighbors opened their doors and listened, many welled up with tears, for the first time with a feeling of hope that we might be able to do something to save the Caroline we know and love. Local government was our last line of defense.
Overwhelmingly, Caroline residents supported the petition. Of those asked to sign, more than 70 percent did.
In September, ROUSE delivered its petition to formally investigate banning fracking. It was signed by half of all the registered voters in the Town of Caroline — the largest petition in our town’s history.
In October, after hours of public testimony, to a packed audience of 200 people, the town council prepared to vote. In the most important speech of my public service, I gave an impassioned plea to uphold the vision that we chose for ourselves as a town. However, the council, with a majority holding gas leases or leading the landowner coalition negotiating with the gas companies, voted down acting on the petition.
But we live in a democracy. In November, with historic 2-1 margin, voters swept out the councilmembers that refused to act and voted in ROUSE members who promised to do everything in their power to protect our town.
We soon enacted a moratorium on fracking and after months of research and public process, we later formally banned fracking in the Town of Caroline. Similar stories were playing out across the state, in towns, villages, and cities. All told, more than 200 local governments in New York State passed fracking bans or moratoria — the largest environmental movement in our state in a generation.
Yet, Caroline was still ingrave danger, surrounded on three sides by pro-drilling municipalities. As pollution doesn’t respect municipal boundaries. The toxic water contamination, poisoning or aquifers, industrial truck traffic will still irreversibly harm our town. The fracking juggernaut seemed inevitable.
BRIDGE TO DISASTER
One day at Cornell University’s Ithaca campus, I stopped by the office of Professor Bob Howarth. Dr. Haworth gained international attention by authoring the first full study of fracking’s climate harms.
I said, “I’m heading to the UN climate negotiations in Durban next week. Is there a message I can carry?”
He said, “Sit down.”
For an hour and a half, he walked me through his latest research, soon to be published. Despite the gas industry’s claim that fracking was a “clean transition fuel,” the evidence was painting a startlingly different picture.
Fossil gas is mostly methane, a super greenhouse gas that is more than 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere on a 20-year timescale.
Carbon dioxide is very potent relative to volume, measured in parts per million. It’s like chili powder. In a large bowl of soup, sprinkling in even tiny amounts can give soup a nice kick. Double the amount, and it is super spicy. Accidentally knock the top off and pour in too much, and it will burn your mouth. In this way, even tiny amounts of carbon dioxide has a disproportionate influence on our planet’s climate.
Yet, if carbon dioxide is chili powder, methane is a Carolina Reaper and Dave’s Insanity Sauce. A super-potent greenhouse gas, methane is measured in parts per billion. On a planetary scale, methane is exceptionally dangerous. Every mass extinction in Earth’s history, with exception of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, was preceded by an ominous spike in atmospheric methane concentrations.
In Dr. Howarth’s office, he explained how scientists had drastically underestimated both how much methane fracking releases and the impact on the climate. Dr. Howarth showed me cutting-edge infrared video imaging from a fracking well pad in Pennsylvania. In the video, a huge towering plume of methane gas — invisible to the naked human eye — loomed high above the forest, venting directly into the atmosphere.
The evidence was clear: far from being a bridge fuel, fracking is a bridge to climate disaster.
After leaving his office and walking on the beautiful tree-lined campus, his words still rang in my ears, “The biggest thing New York State can do to prevent climate catastrophe is to stop fracking.”
I asked myself “What does it mean to be a steward in the face of threats from beyond our borders that endanger everything we hold dear?”
EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY ACTION
On one hand witnessing my town rise up in an unprecedented democratic outpouring of resistance, and on the other hand, knowing how fracking will cause a climate catastrophe, I knew I must act.
As an elected official, how do I honor my oath of office to protect the general welfare and be a steward for our community in a crisis?
We must stop the extreme fossil fuel industry that is stopping at nothing to get the last of the all drops of profitable petrocarbon, destroying communities while destroying the future of life. Yet stopping fracking seemed impossible. The forces seemed far bigger than even one town could change. Yet we must. In the abdication of leadership from the federal or state governments, local government was the last line of defence.
That’s when inside of me got angry, got intense: an absolute certainty, determination, unwavering resolve and faith, a hidden power. Solemn duty. An aroused will. Something within me could no longer accept this reality and this injustice. I made a decision.
I thought, “If there was ever a moment to put everything else aside, this was it. We can’t keep escaping the fossil fuel industry and its devastation. We can no longer retreat from the extreme fossil fuel industry that is driving the climate emergency, poisoning our people, corrupting our democracy, and destroying our living planet: we must confront it head on. The line is drawn here.”
I decided to do everything in my power to stop fracking and protect my home state. But what could one lowly council member in a tiny rural town do?
The answer is the same to any change in society: organize.
LET THIS BE THE MOMENT
At this moment, thousands of New Yorkers were joining the fight against fracking, organizing in town by town across the state and marching on Albany. Under the coalition banner New Yorkers Against Fracking, businesses, wineries, farmers, churches, health professionals, scientists, artists, celebrities, all organized to fight fracking.
People bird-dogged the Governor at every public event he attended, with signs reading “Ban Fracking Now” and “Don’t Frack New York.” They showed up at the State Fair, the Greek Yogurt festival, and even the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina to protest Cuomo on fracking.
It’s estimated that 20,000 people actively participated in the New York anti-fracking movement. Many people heroically put their lives on hold, spent down their savings, and funded grassroots groups out of pocket. More than 3,000 people pledged nonviolent civil disobedience, promising to put their bodies on the line to prevent rigs from drilling if Governor Cuomo allowed fracking.
Taking a leave of absence from my dayjob at Cornell Cooperative Extension and surviving on savings, I resolved to help defend my town and our state from fracking, regardless of the cost.
Working with outspoken Tompkins County Legislature Chair Martha Robertson, we created a plan to organize local elected officials across the state to call on the Governor to continue the de-facto statewide moratorium on fracking until it was proven safe (which it would never be). As elected officials, we had a special role, voice, and responsibility. With the help of trusted advisers Julia Walsh, John Armstrong, and Kate Sinding, we devised a plan of how to use it.
We drafted a letter to Governor Cuomo requesting that to fulfill his commitment to make a decision on fracking based on the facts and the science. We urged him to conduct three studies and make them available to the public before making a decision: (1) a public health study; (2) a social economic study to investigate the impacts on our first responders, taxpayers, roads, housing, and tourism; and (3) a cumulative impact study of the impacts of hundreds of millions of gallons of water and toxic chemicals on our streams and aquifers, truck traffic on our roads, and pollution on our climate.
Circulating the letter to colleagues, several dozen signed on. We launched with a press conference in Albany state capitol as Elected Officials to Protect New York, announcing to the press that 200 elected officials signed the letter. Our mantra: “if fracking is not safe in one municipality, it’s not safe anywhere.”
Our purpose was to leverage the power of their bully pulpit, media access, credibility, and influence, to shift the political mainstream on fracking. Driving around the state, we organized press conferences in nearly every major city across the state, submitted op eds, garnered TV, radio, and newspaper coverage in more than 200 media stories.
ACHIEVING THE IMPOSSIBLE
We inspired hundreds of local elected officials across New York to join together to protect and defend our state. All told, nearly one thousand elected officials from all 62 counties from across the political spectrum signed our letter — Republicans, Democrats Green, Working Family Parties, and independents.
We successfully helped raise the profile of the issue, show the breadth of concern, provide a due process path forward, and make it politically safe for hundreds of elected officials to speak out against fracking.
In the face of unprecedented political pressure, the Governor eventually commissioned a comprehensive public health study of fracking. Holding a copy of a thick compendium of hundreds of media and scientific findings of health harms from fracking compiled by Concerned Health Professionals of New York, the public health commissioner concluded fracking was unsafe, saying he would not allow his children to live in a community with fracking.
In 2015, New York State officially banned fracking, the first state to do so on public health grounds, inspiring governments around the world to ban fracking.
EXTREME RESPONSIBILITY
Extreme responsibility is the ownership we assume for solving a problem that no reasonable person would expect that we can solve, yet we feel a solemn duty to do everything we can do to solve it.
Taking extreme responsibility means we when there is a problem that is big, we step up big. We take action that matches the speed, scale, and significance of the problem. It means that regardless of how big the challenge, regardless of how impossible it may seem, regardless of the courage required, regardless the dangers or the personal costs, regardless of how small we seem in the face of seemingly unstoppable forces — we act.
Extreme responsibility demands that we expand our realm of responsibility. Our purpose, mission, and role must be big enough to help solve the problem. To do this, we must grow our sense of who we are. We can no longer settle for focusing narrowly on what we thought our role was or who we thought we were. We must grow and expand ourselves to accept responsibility for everything in our families, organizations, communities, nation, and world.
It means that even when we seem small and powerless, that we are response-able. Even in the face of seemingly overwhelming unstoppable forces, we have the ability to respond. Our power to make a difference is generally greater than we can ever imagine. Our actions, taken with clean intention, inspire others, and can make a difference that can help change the very course of history.
To move from awareness to action, to step up, take action, get involved, and become leaders, we need to feel empowered. Yet, we often don’t know how big problems are, why they matter, or how we can make a difference. We may think that it’s not our problem or it’s impossible to solve.
The crux of change for any organization, community, or movement, is telling an inspiring story that engages a critical mass of people to become leaders for change. People must feel why it matters, inspired to act, and that it’s up to them. This story has three parts: must, can, and will.
First, must – we need to feel moved to act, that we must act. Emotion drives motion. We need to emotionally connect with the issue, understanding why it matters to our life and what’s at stake if we don’t act. This often happens through vivid stories.
Second, can – we must feel inspired. We need to see that there’s something we can do. We must know change is possible and that we have the power to make a difference. We need to see that we are part of something larger: a higher calling, a movement, a larger story.
Third, will – we need to feel responsible, that we have the ability and the duty to respond. We must accept that we have full responsibility. We must know the problem is ours to solve — that it’s up to us.
The key to leadership is responsibility. It starts with making a decision: that we can and must act, and therefore, we will act. When we act, we inspire others. Courage is contagious.
ROLE OF ELECTED OFFICIALS
In this time of global crisis, elected officials face enormous burdens: struggling to protect public health from a global pandemic, an economic crisis with one in five Americans out of work and one in five American children going to bed hungry, responding to racialized police brutality, an increasing authoritarian federal government, radicalized politics, and an ecological and climate emergency that threatens the very survival of humans as a species. We are simultaneously confronted with shuttering businesses, rising COVID cases, overcrowded hospitals, streets filled with protesters, and a growing deficit budget.
A few years ago at the Young Elected Officials Network, I was invited to speak on panel on the climate crisis. I showed a graph of the global carbon dioxide and methane concentrations and corresponding temperatures from 800,000 years to the present day, showing the terrifying spike in greenhouse gas.
I said, “No one has this crisis covered. There’s no big green group, no government, no business, and no billionaire, who has this crisis covered. It’s up to us. It’s up to us to lead the entire nation and for America to lead the world to solve this crisis.”
What is a responsible elected official to do in the age of global, national, and local crises?
Extraordinary times require extraordinary action. The window to act is vanishingly small.
We face a choice: We can retreat in isolation or we can join together in solidarity, united across this nation and world to work for a better future for all.
THE GREAT TURNING
Joanna Macy, the teacher of deep ecology teacher and buddhist scholar, said there are three things we need in times of great global crisis.
First, we must hold actions to stop the bleeding. We must confront the brutal reality, resist, and fight back. This is already happening, as we see people standing together across the country in the largest mass protests in history, responding to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the hundreds of others of black and brown skin who have died at the hands of American police. We see this in Standing Rock and countless fights to stop gas and oil pipelines.
We must grow these movements and stand in solidarity with them. A movement becomes a movement when it sees itself. When we see courage in others, we discover it within ourselves. The power to rise above. The power to stand in the face of almost impossible odds and to defy the forces of fate. The power to step into the path of an oncoming storm, stand carrying a torch of light, freedom, and justice, and confront the forces of darkness with courage and will.
Second, we must also look to the future, beyond the dark night to see on horizon the shining sun of a brighter day. As Dr. King said, to have a dream. A dream of a day when we have solved these converging crises. We must see what is possible: a world of peace, justice, harmony, community, and democracy. To accomplish this, we must create new structures and new systems. We must plant and nurture the seeds of a brighter tomorrow today.
Across the world, people are busy working to dismantle the structures of racism, oppression, and dirty energy. Communities are phasing out fossil fuels and striving 100% clean energy. A new generation of young organic farmers is working the land, creating healthy food, resilient communities, and restoring ecosystems.
Third and finally, we must shift consciousness. We must shift the role that we see for our lives in our organizations, community, democracy, and world. We must shift our vision of how we live our values.
To do this, we must confront the decisions we have made and what they mean for our living world, for our democracy, and for how we relate to one another. We must confront the brutal reality that this global system of putting private gain of a small group of people is worth more than our collective well-being and survival.
CONFRONTING THE TRUTH
To stop the bleeding, nurture seeds of a new future, and shift consciousness, we must first confront the truth and see with new eyes.
To solve racism in America, we must first confront the history that America was founded on racism and genocide. We must acknowledge the disease and massacres that wiped out more than 90 percent of indigenous populations of the continent. We must confront the policies in California that paid European settlers a bounty for the scalps of indigenous men, women, and children. We must confront that America’s wealth was built on human beings abducted from their ancestral lands and brutally transported overseas in mortally-dangerous ships to slave in in brutal rain of terror and forced labor we call slavery.
To solve the public health and climate crises, we must confront our system that puts profits over people, of wealth over wisdom, of power over patriotism, has led to unspeakably devastating public health outcomes, hundreds of thousands of Americans dying at rates far greater than other countries. We must confront how the Republican right has systematically radicalized their base and fermented hate and extremism to fuel their political rise. They have created a right wing propaganda machine that tens of millions of Americans that dismiss basic scientific realities like the climate crisis and pandemic.
SEEING WITH NEW EYES
We must see our relationship with ourselves, our society, and the Earth with new eyes.
We must see how one corporation’s profits exist within the broader economy that requires a huge diversity of people and small businesses. We must see how any business depends on society to provide roads, mail, schools, and security that enable prosperity.
We must see how all economic activity exists entirely within society. We must see the economic value of parents who care for their children and their elderly parents. We must see the economic and human value of paid family leave, so we don’t need to be a millionaire to take time off to care for your kids or mom when they are sick.
That our political system exists within the context of a healthy democracy. We must see that only an informed citizenry committed to mutual tolerance, forbearance, and the welfare of all can support democratic society. We must see that social equality creates a stronger economy, and that political inclusion creates a stronger democracy.
We must see how human society exists entirely within the confines of our living planet’s incredibly thin biosphere. The habitable space on our planet is vanishingly thin. With the exception of a few astronauts breathing on life support in orbit or who traveled to the moon, all of humanity has only ever existed in a tiny, razor-then habitable zone on the surface of this planet that is only a few miles across. You could walk across it in your lunch break.
We must see that, like a tree where the only living tissue is the tiny thin outer green rim below the bark, life on living Earth is vanishingly delicate. Thus, 150 years of digging up and burning fossil fuels has turned our tiny atmosphere into an oven that is melting the arctic, acidifying and raising the seas, and drying out our continents. Unless we pull off the seemingly impossible, we will unravel our planet’s ecosystems within our lifetimes.
And lastly, we must rethink what it means to be a citizen and the role of people we elect to represent us.
PURPOSE OF ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES
Being elected to serve in public office is a grave responsibility. When being sworn in, elected officials in the United States take an oath of office to uphold the Constitution, of which the preamble says, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Thus, the purpose of an elected official is to ensure justice, peace, protection, public welfare, and safeguard freedom — namely, to be stewards of our community, state, and nation that we were elected to serve.
In this time of global crisis, elected officials have a moral obligation to join together to provide collective leadership for our nation and world. There are many issues that cross government boundaries, such as racism, the pandemic, climate emergency, where we have to join together across our towns, cities, and states. These crises cannot be solved jurisdiction by jurisdiction. To solve them, we must join together across our communities, our states, and our nation.
If we’re not protecting the general welfare or fighting for our collective survival, what are we there for? That is extreme responsibility.
If we ensure business as usual continues, that the recycling program runs, and potholes are paved, yet the pandemic kills 10 percent of the population or the climate crisis makes Earth uninhabitable, our elected officials have failed to uphold their constitutional oaths to protect the general welfare. In the face of these global crises, inaction is a failure of leadership.
The purpose of elected leaders is to lead. Especially when it is difficult and when no one else is stepping up to lead. At this critical moment in history, elected officials must step into their higher purpose — of being entrusted to serve as a leader, as a servant of the public, and to do whatever it takes to serve. To put their own interests aside to be a selfless public servant. Not only a public servant for humans, but be it a servant of the general welfare of all life, and for future generations, because that’s what our survival depends on.
That’s why we founded Elected Officials to Protect America. We inspire, train, and organize elected officials to uphold our constitutional oaths to protect the general welfare, to protect health, to protect our communities, and environment that enables survival to be possible.
PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: WE ARE THE LEADERS WE SEEK
One day in the Spring of 2001, I found myself in classroom Boynton Middle School classroom after school. A group of middle school students from the predominantly African American Southside neighborhood gathered. Tim Logue, a city planner from Ithaca City Hall, got up and asked the students what they wanted to see for their neighborhood.
The kids hesitated, then when seeing he was taking their input seriously, poured out ideas for how to make the neighborhood better: a skateboard park, an ice cream truck, safe streets. I was profoundly inspired, seeing a government official leave City Hall, go out in to a neighborhood, and ask kids want they wanted for their community — and then include this into an official government plan.
In that moment, I saw the highest purpose of government; to facilitate a participatory democracy: convening and supporting people to articulate a shared vision for our collective future, and work towards bring it into being. I saw how an inclusive, participatory democracy brings people together around an exciting positive vision for the future.
This experience set me on a path to study policy and government, interning with the Caroline planning board, eventually leading to be asked to run for office.
Thus, what underlies my work in public service and beyond, is a belief in participatory democracy and the power of people to come together and create a positive world. A belief that we each have the power to act, that we have an important role to play. As is said, the only title in the United States that is greater than that of President is that of citizen.
As citizens (inclusively defined) of our communities, nation, and planet, we all have a responsibility to hold our elected representatives accountable to that higher purpose of being an elected official. We must ask our elected officials to be For that, to be a public servant, to put the interests of the public ahead of their personal selves. A true hero for their community.
We are the leaders that we seek. We have the power to hold our elected officials accountable to be public servants, stewards, and heroes for the community — to do what’s in the best interest for all we represent.
People have far more collective power to leverage against elected officials than they could possibly imagine. People in power require the consent of the governed. We just need to have a critical mass of people that realize that. It takes only a few weeks to throw out a dictator if the entire country shuts down. We have immense collective power when we use it together.
What we are living though now is not working. This total breakdown and we’re at this crisis point. We all have the responsibility — extreme responsibility — of citizens as well. We can and we must.
We are all the leaders we seek.
BUILDING THE WORLD OF OUR DREAMS
While studying at Cornell University, at my father’s suggestion, I answered a classified ad in the newspaper to work with the Caroline Town Planning Board.
As an intern, I helped compile the pieces of the first comprehensive plan in Caroline. The plan was written directly by citizens. Over a three-year process, the plan was informed by surveys, town meetings, and public hearings. Three diverse citizen-led working groups wrote sections of the plan: farming and small business, open space and recreation, and housing and transportation. Each working group was composed of farmers, business owners, craftspeople, parents, and interested citizens. They each wrote a vision and goals for their section of the plan.
What emerged was a beautiful 20-year vision for our community. We articulated what we want: walkable communities, affordable housing for all, locally-grown food, bus lines and bike trails, quality education, and protecting our farms and forests. My humble job was to compile the visions and goals into a comprehensive document.
To me the document was to be treated with the utmost respect, for it was the best expression of the collective will of the people of our town for our shared future. It was the articulation of We the People of what we want for ourselves as a community.
I was deeply inspired by this process and the outcome. When given the opportunity to articulate a shared future in an inclusive process, we collectively imagine a better future for all. Participatory democracy is an invitation to create a world of our dreams.
In our moment of crisis, as fracking threatened our town, this vision provided a beacon of light to guide us. Fracking was incompatible with the vision that we choose for our community. We chose to uphold the vision of who we, as a community, wanted to be.
In this moment of national and global crisis, let us return to the positive vision of what we want our collective future to be. What are the principles that shall guide us?
FOUNDING PRINCIPLES
In this moment of crisis, let us return to the inspirational purpose articulated in our nation’s founding documents: the purpose of the union is to provide for our collective welfare, common protection, prosperity, justice for all, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all. We can, we must, and we have the will to achieve it; wide majorities of American public want a healthier, sustainable, and more just world. As a nation, let us return to this purpose and articulate a positive shared vision for our collective future that serves as a beacon to guide our nation through the darkness and into a brighter tomorrow.
Globally, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are an inspiration example of a shared, inclusive vision that fosters collective action. For the first time in human history, our species has articulated a set of inclusive, bold, visionary goals for our planet. The goals articulate a positive vision of humans in relationship with one another and the world in our economies, societies, and our living planet. To create the world of our dreams, then we need an inclusive economy within equitable societies within healthy ecosystems on our living planet.
From North America to Europe to Africa, I have seen first-hand how the SDGs have inspired teachers, students, institutional leaders, and government officials to collaboration and common purpose. That’s the magic of shared inspirational goals. It’s where the impossible becomes to possible.
LET US BEGIN
Our survival as a democracy, as a living planet, as a global society is at stake. Our values for peace, justice, community. democracy, respect, and tolerance is under threat.
Progress is not inevitable, nor is survival. Our history is littered with civilizations and societies that once flourished, and at the apex of their power, the pursuit of selfish interests over the public collective good undermined their survival. From ecological overreach to political consolidation of power in the hands of an authoritarian few, we have seen this dynamic play out from Easter Island to the Roman empire. Civilization, democracy, entire ecosystems are precarious, fragile, and vulnerable.
As Jared Diamond in his book Collapse reported, a key factor in the survival of civilizations in vulnerable environments is what choices it made: how it related to itself and the world around it.
We are called to do the same now. Will we as a nation choose to live by our founding values which we articulated: justice for all, common protection, that people are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Or will we descend into the downward spiral of division, destruction, degradation, and oppression of the few over the many in a world of dwindling and declining resources and wealth?
We must face the brutal facts that our survival as a democracy, as a society, as a species is at stake. What we do in the next decade will determine the quality of life in our lives and for potentially all future generations.
Let us renew with commitment to our values of peace, justice, liberty, freedom, responsibility, service, prosperity, protection, and common defense. In the tradition of the precursor to American constitutional democracy, the Haudenosaunee people, let us consider the impacts of the previous in the next seven generations in all of our deliberations.
CALL TO ACTION
If you are inspired by this work of supporting elected officials in being stewards for our communities, nation, and world, please join us.
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Together, we can support and hold our our elected officials accountable to being stewards, leaders, and heroes who they are called to be in this critical time.