This week Maui resident, Paul Deslauriers, joins us to update us on how he and his merry band of activists were able to transform their local county government from “corporate rule” to “rule by the people” and how this template for change can be used nationwide. Plus, we parody the corporate sponsorship of baseball games.
1 Comment
“This isn’t about trying to persuade your elected representatives to do the right thing….this is about replacing them.”
“You want to go to the primary place of change.”
Those are good points.
But your guest is wrong to say that we can’t create systemic change on a state or federal level.
Not only can we chew gum and walk at the same time, we have to. Your guest even pointed this out when asked about minimum wage that is controlled by the state.
We can and should work on the primary place of change on the federal level in 2022 while your guest works form the county level and then we can meet on the state level.
On the federal level in 2022 we can give the current elected representatives a choice to do the right thing while at the same time setting up an infrastructure to replace them if they do not do the right thing.
We can focus on the primary place of change by demanding that candidates in 2022 run small donor campaigns (no more than 200 dollars per campaign from any one donor- 200 primary, 200 general) in order to earn our votes testing your theory that politicians want our votes more than big money to run their campaigns.
It seems to me that this could be part of the focus of the Congress Club that could be more effective than writing letters to the Congresspersons that work for the big money interests asking them to do the right thing. It could even make the letters to those Congresspersons more effective.
Isn’t making a demand of candidates and enforcing that demand with our votes how democracy is supposed to work?
If so, please explain why this application of the basic principles of democracy will not work or get behind it and help make it happen.