Unsolicited Testimony

I get asked a lot: Why do you do this work? The answer is not as straightforward as some people think.

The first part was me being nosy. I remember when my long-term partner was a newspaper reporter; he just knew things about random people. Knew what they were doing, knew the skinny. Most people only go surface level and read what’s in the news. But the bulk of what happens in your local government happens in meetings, and I just liked knowing what was going on and connecting the dots in a similar way. The city isn’t going to connect the dots for you. You have to do it yourself, which is unfortunate, but true.

The second part was living in an area where my civic association outright did not accept me. I lived in a neighborhood with a significant homeless population that was causing problems for residents. (That’s a whole other post.) The civic association in that neighborhood refused to acknowledge it was a problem for the affected area, instead focusing only on the one street by the president’s house.

During that time, my long-term partner, drawing on his reporting background, filed a Freedom of Information Act request on emails between the civic association and the council member about the homeless situation. What he found was that while the association was publicly hemming and hawing — “yeah, it’s a problem” — they were privately asking the council member for development concessions in exchange for keeping the encampment where it was.

When he confronted the neighborhood leadership about this, they started screaming about how disrespectful we were and how dare we look at their correspondence, which is well within our rights as citizens.

I remember thinking: I never want to be that. I never want to purposely leave residents out of a decision just because I disagree with them. I hate when the scales of justice aren’t balanced, and I do what’s in my power to keep them balanced.

The third part is that I realized I was good at it, better than I anticipated. I’m good at listening to residents, bringing their concerns forward, and organizing information to educate the community. In my mind, an educated community makes smarter decisions together. And despite what some politicians think, the more variety of voices in the room, the stronger the outcome.

So why do I do this?

The most significant reason comes back to the summer of 2023. I had always wanted to make a difference, but that voice became louder when I started to genuinely worry about my mortality. I realized you’re only on this earth once. Maybe my job is to leave it just a little bit better than when I came in. I don’t know if I’ll accomplish that, but I’m going to try.

The maybe-unhealthy part is that I know the countdown is on my forehead. My days are numbered, whether that’s one day from now or sixty years from now. I have a choice in how I live them. I can make a difference, or I can fade into oblivion.

I refuse to fade.