by Haneef Nelson
The most important elected officials that have the greatest impact on your life ARE NOT the President and the Federal Congress. It is your LOCAL elections. Your local elections are your City Councilors, Mayors, Aldermen, Selectman, School Boards, County Executives, etc. These are the offices that set policy that directly impact your everyday life as well as the lives of your children. It is with these elected officials that policies are set for your local property taxes, school policies/curriculum changes, town ordinances, as well as other laws and policies that govern municipal services, social benefits, and local infrastructure. This is the layer of government that has the most impact to our everyday lives yet is paid the least amount of attention by most people.
One of the most important local level offices that is most overlooked is the School Committee/Board of Education. These are the individuals that have control over our children’s educational indoctrination as well as the social engineering that tends to go on in most schools. Some may say, “I don’t have any children.” or “My children are grown so why should I be concerned with the Board of Education?” Because this is not just about you and yours. We must get past that thinking and rationale. This is about our communities, and we need to examine all facets of it, not just the ones we are told to be most concerned about.
When you think about that, you must ask yourself why do we pay more attention to the one set of elections every 4 years at the Federal level while ignoring these local elections that have the greatest impact in our lives? We will save the answer to that for another article in this series. The local elections are also the easiest layer of government to interact with because their offices are literally where you live. When you vote for someone, you are voting on what they say they are going to do for you and your community, the platform that they stand on, and the potential that you feel they must have to do the job you believe is appropriate. But once they are in office, it is now time to get to engage the political process.
Engaging the political process at a local level has several layers to it and is both an individual as well as collective effort. The first level of engagement is simply calling/visiting the offices of your elected officials. This direct level of engagement allows you to build a relationship with your elected officials. This relationship building effort can help to advance any causes, new legislation, or socio-political issues in which you are engaged. It can also help you to get an inside look as to how a person becomes electable and stays in office. This type of information is useful if you ever decide to run for office yourself or assist on the campaign of somebody else that is running for office.
There is also the coalition approach. This approach is when a group of you address your local legislation through a group or coalition. Often this approach is employs petitions, marches, and rallies that draw attention to a particular group or agenda. There is also the targeted approach in which you are targeting specific people and offices that match your agenda and policy points you want to contend about. There is more to cover on the local elections, and we will get to that with part 3 of this series.
