TED talk @ TEDxSeattle

Photo Credit: Ibsen Photography

I had the fabulous opportunity to speak on the TEDxSeattle stage about the life-changing power of local democracy to improve people’s lives and make our society more just and more fair. I was grateful for, among other things, the necessity of finding the 15-minute way to talk about things that I can go (and have gone) on for days at a time about. The thrust of it all:

Local Government is where civil rights either get defended… or they get destroyed.

Including and especially the right to vote.

Our votes carry our values, they voice our needs, and they shape our systems.

When people don’t get a vote, their needs don’t get voiced and they get exploited by the systems created to cater to the people who got heard.

There are regular people in every state and every community who are already hard at work fighting to make sure everyone in their community gets heard. To make life more fair. To ensure people get treated with humanity. This work is called organizing.

Now is the time to seek them out. Allow yourself to be organized. Help organize others. The very concept of democracy, that everyone deserves a voice in creating the rules that govern us, is at stake right now. The fight is not just national. It is not even mostly national. It is state. It is county. It is local. Wherever you are, that is where the fight is. The best time, the only time, to get involved is now.

You can watch it here.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.