Why Expecting the Feds to Fix Your Streetlights is a Dim Idea
How Focusing Locally Can Give You a Voice and Restore Your Sanity
Photo by Amol Tyagi on Unsplash
It's easy to become wrapped up in the spectacle of national politics. Legacy media outlets are masters at diverting our focus and leaving us entertained and uninformed. We're often introduced to politicians who are telegenic yet ineffective legislators or statesmen. Many place undue trust in these people, mistakenly believing that they will provide instant solutions to their problems, without recognizing that true influence often lies closer to home—in local government.
Placing unquestioning faith in politicians, particularly those motivated by self-interest and the thirst for power, poses a significant risk. The danger amplifies when we depend too heavily on officials who are physically removed from our communities and largely out of reach for direct communication.
Engaging leaders at the local community level makes more sense to effect change, primarily due to understanding the proximity and accessibility of these representatives. Unlike national figures, who often seem enigmatic and distant, local representatives like city council members and school board officials are right here in our backyard. They live in our towns, their kids might attend our schools, and they will likely frequent the same establishments.
This geographical and sociological closeness often translates to an increased susceptibility to scrutiny. If concerns arise or there's a particular agenda we wish to champion, the channels of communication with these local representatives are more direct. They are our immediate voice and our link to governance.
This familiarity offers us a unique advantage. Instead of feeling distanced, as we often do from national politicians, we can directly see the impact of our local representatives' decisions on our daily lives. Their actions resonate in our local parks, schools, and streets. Their choices might affect our property taxes, school curriculums, or local infrastructure projects.
Observing local board proceedings offers insights into prospective community transformations. I recently attended a community board meeting in the Bronx, and it was a revelation. I learned about the opposition to a proposed stadium that some developers wanted to construct for a one-time cricket tournament. The overwhelming number of people voicing their objections makes it unlikely the plan will proceed. I also listened to local residents expressing concerns about property crimes and e-bikes not adhering to road rules. During the meeting, the local precinct police chief presented crime statistics and outlined measures to curb criminal activities.
A few years ago, I arranged meetings with state representatives to discuss amendments in family law and got insights into who leads specific committees in Albany. In 2018, I visited a state representative's office in Washington, DC. While I didn't get the chance to speak with the representative personally, I did engage with the staff. They were accommodating and made an effort to communicate directly with a constituent like me.
From my experience, the prolonged disputes we see in Congress are simply theater. The more impactful decisions are made locally: in community boards, city or town councils, and state legislatures because we can access a front-row seat to our representatives' actions and decisions.
As proactive and informed citizens, we must harness this close connection. Our active participation helps shape our community in ways that truly reflect its members' aspirations. Local politics grants us greater influence and casts us as stewards of our community. While national politics might dominate headlines, genuine engagement often finds its home closer to us - this is where individual endeavors can genuinely reshape the community.
Have a concern? You can attend a local meeting or even schedule a one-on-one. Accessibility to our local elected officials fosters accountability that's hard to replicate on a larger political scale. They are often more receptive to feedback, knowing they might run into their constituents at any time, whether at a town hall or a school function.
Think of routine annoyances like damaging potholes or absent crosswalks endangering your children's route to school. Your advocacy can address these concerns, directly influencing your daily existence. Are you hoping for a stop sign at a hectic crossroad or enhanced illumination on a shadowy street? Your civic involvement can bring this to fruition. Active participation can also improve amenities like more regular and effective waste removal, elevating the hygiene and appeal of your community.
Engaging in local politics empowers you to instigate tangible shifts that touch the lives of you and those around you daily. These matters might seem trivial, but their collective impact profoundly alters community living standards. To me, prioritizing local over national politics isn't a retreat but a calculated recalibration. It's about harnessing influence, intentionally directing energy, focus, and oversight where they resonate most.
If we see national politics as a vast, tumultuous sea, it's time to view local politics as your tranquil backyard pond. While taming the sea's vast waves might be unfeasible, you have the tools to maintain your pond's purity and vitality. Its reach might be limited, but its significance is undeniable. After all, even a humble pond contributes to the vast global water system.
Do you even know who your local representatives are? If the answer is no, it's time to question why that is and to take active steps to rectify it. A valuable first step would be to consult USA.gov's list of elected officials to identify and connect with your local public servants.
Participate, engage, and steward your pond—because it's through these smaller bodies of water that the greater ocean remains balanced.
Clayton Craddock is a devoted father of two, an accomplished musician, and a thought-provoker dedicated to Socratic questioning, challenging the status quo, and encouraging a deeper contemplation on a range of issues. Subscribe to Think Things Through HERE, and for inquiries and to connect, email him here: Clayton@claytoncraddock.com.
Call me cynical if you must, but while I find the general sentiment of this admirable in an idealistic sense, when held up against my own experiences and observations it strikes me as hopelessly naive.
The reason I say this is that in my own attempts over many years to engage with anyone at any level of the 'public sector', it has never taken long before I come up against that familiar smokescreen of bland indifference, generally in the form of well-rehearsed runarounds where one is consistently informed that whatever issue is at hand is in someone else's purview, and that the office or agency or official one is trying to deal with is powerless to deal with it other than by whatever policy or procedure they are bound by, but have you tried calling X, Y or Z edifice to share your concerns? Whereupon the either very polite and attentive or else supercilious and condescending staffer who takes calls at the offices of X, Y or Z informs you that you'd be better off discussing your trivial and inconsequential matters with the office you'd already been given the runaround by, etc, etc.
Over the years I've come to accept that few if any individuals who deposit checks into their own bank accounts and call it 'income' from public-sector sources regard anyone outside that closed and elitist world as anything but a threat and an enemy. I take it as a given that those who draw their livelihoods from any form of government 'service' do so not out of any sense of obligation or duty to any community of any size, but rather because government benefits and pensions are simply a more reliable means of padding their own lifestyles and servicing their own personal interests than earning an honest living (by working for it) will ever be.
Anyone who comes into their field of vision calling for 'change' is perceived and treated as a potential disruptor of a quite reliable system whereby funds go out of various public-sector accounts and into their own pockets, legally and otherwise, and must therefore be kept from acquiring any further knowledge of where the money actually came from, what was supposed to be done with it, and especially whose pockets it ended up in, instead.
Government is basically a vast money-laundering racket and probably has been throughout all of human history. There is something (apparently) about the mindset of civil service which both allows and requires the individual on public payroll to part company with their own sense of personal accountability for whatever actions they undertake in the discharging of their various functions, and this over time turns the civil servant into a person who does not regard themselves as being in the same world as those who are outside the system. They have much to gain by playing ball with a setup which rewards them for their ineffectiveness, and everything to lose by trying to make it work any better by way of actually serving the community or (God forbid) complying scrupulously with the law.
If I had read the above essay as part of an eighth-grade civics course (though few schools were offering civics courses by the time I reached the eighth grade, which was half a century ago), perhaps it might have inspired me with a sense of enthusiasm, for the potentialities of citizen engagement with the structures of power.
But I'm not in the eighth grade any more. A long list of encounters and experiences with the public sector, at every level on which I've had the misfortune of encountering its hostility and experiencing its coldly indifferent machinations, has taught me it is best to regard anyone on public payroll as a potential enemy, because as soon as I open my mouth to assert my birthrights as a citizen, they will already be regarding me as precisely that and little else, unless I can show them that somehow doing business with me will put still more money in their own pockets.
All I've been able to come up with in all that time has been to have as little to do with any portion or version of 'government' as I can manage. Any attempt to assert any degree of influence I have ever made has left me wishing I'd never dirtied my hands with such racketeers, who never have nor ever will give a rat's ass about serving anyone but themselves, in a system that expects and requires them to.
I always end up realizing what sort of people would ever go into making a living in this manner in the first place, right about the time that I am remembering that all they see in me is a threat to their gravy train.