Greetings!
I hope you've been having a great Summer. If this is your first time here, welcome! I've been writing this newsletter, The Eleven, since 2008 - that's right, 11 years! How time flies :) This month I want to share with you some thinking I've been doing about world/neighborhood change - the concept is basically issues vs. candidates.
There are many ways to effect change in our world, and boy does it need changing. From logging old-growth forests in the PNW to climate change we have our work cut out for us. There seems to be mostly one path towards change that is encouraged in our society and that is getting behind a candidate or political party. If that's exciting to you - by all means - I do think it's valuable service - especially voter registration and voting! And, the type of work that is involved in politics is not for everyone. It can often be confrontational - and I think the biggest problem might be our inability to get behind leaders. Leaders are people and people are fallible. We want perfection in our leaders and it's just not going to happen. So, we get stuck trying to get behind Warren, Sanders, Harris, or a local leader and then feel disillusioned when their humanness is revealed. For some, it's no matter, and they'll keep on fighting for their candidate(s). For others, though, there seems nowhere else to go where one can make a difference. I think issues are a great place for many people to put their energy.