Empowerment and Near Death Experiences
Nov. 16th, 2016 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI’m so glad I went to the DCPAA meeting! It was fabulous! Energizing! Empowering! Productive. Positive.
Thirty-five or so people. About half of them were people I met around a year ago when I first helped set up this group up to get some sort of traction in the mid-Hudson Valley for Bernie Sanders’ campaign. A lot of new faces, too, including a surprisingly large contingent of people who live in NYC but who own second homes here.
Three people who are running for the Dutchess County Legislature.
I have no idea if they do this in other states, but in New York, in addition to the State Assembly and Senate, each county also has a legislative branch and a chief executive. While you might be inclined to think this is a stooopid job, on a par with County Dogcatcher, county legislatures, in fact, are charged with disbursing county moneys left over after subsidizing operational costs associated with county services. These funds are collected from local sales taxes and property taxes. (And I confess: I don’t have a clue what services the county provides.)
This means the Dutchess County Legislature is essentially responsible for funding large portions of the services offered by local nonprofits – like the Anderson Center for Autism, the Child Abuse Prevention Center, El Centro De Abriendo Puertas Para Familias, the Coalition on Elder Abuse, the Hudson Valley Boy Scouts etc etc etc etc.
Dutchess County actually has a considerable surplus of $$$ right now, but few of these nonprofits are receiving any of it.
Electing progressive-minded County legislators is completely doable!
I mean, we’re talking about elections here that can be won easily with 100 votes.
We’ll take back the Dutchess County Legislature in 2017, and we’ll take back the United States of America in 2020!
###
I almost didn’t go to the DCPAA meeting.
At 6:30 at night here, it might as well be midnight, and it was pouring rain. I hate driving even under the best conditions.
But I’d promised the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress a ride.
The Former Democratic Candidate for Congress suggested a shortcut. The shortcut took me through a maze of narrow, twisting country backroads. I’d forgotten how to operate the defroster on my car. And the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress was regaling me with her latest adventures with anal/rectal cancer –
“Yes, they’re gonna take it all out!” she said cheerfully. “I’ll spend the rest of my life with a bag.”
One of the things I actually like about the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress is her affect. I have never known her to be bent out of shape by anything but social injustice. The vicissitudes of her own life she accepts very matter-of-factly.
“And then I asked the doctor, ‘So what if this doesn’t work? How much pain are we looking at?’” she went on. “’Oh, a lot,’ he said. ‘But we’ll give you morphine. And, of course, you’ll have access to all the latest assisted suicide technology – ‘”
I’d slowed my car to about 20 miles an hour, and I felt like a goddam parade marshal because there was a line of cars in back of me that probably stretched back an eighth of a mile. Some of those drivers were actually honking.
Well, this is it, I thought. One of those cars – driven, no doubt, by an enraged Trump supporter who instinctively knows I’m a progressive – is gonna go all Mad Max on me, ram his car into me. Get out of his car and shoot me through the window. I will die listening to the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress babble about anal/rectal cancer.
Fortunately, at that very moment, some circuit in my aging brain kicked in, and I remembered how to use my defroster!
On the way home, I drove back a different way, on a route I was familiar with.
Thirty-five or so people. About half of them were people I met around a year ago when I first helped set up this group up to get some sort of traction in the mid-Hudson Valley for Bernie Sanders’ campaign. A lot of new faces, too, including a surprisingly large contingent of people who live in NYC but who own second homes here.
Three people who are running for the Dutchess County Legislature.
I have no idea if they do this in other states, but in New York, in addition to the State Assembly and Senate, each county also has a legislative branch and a chief executive. While you might be inclined to think this is a stooopid job, on a par with County Dogcatcher, county legislatures, in fact, are charged with disbursing county moneys left over after subsidizing operational costs associated with county services. These funds are collected from local sales taxes and property taxes. (And I confess: I don’t have a clue what services the county provides.)
This means the Dutchess County Legislature is essentially responsible for funding large portions of the services offered by local nonprofits – like the Anderson Center for Autism, the Child Abuse Prevention Center, El Centro De Abriendo Puertas Para Familias, the Coalition on Elder Abuse, the Hudson Valley Boy Scouts etc etc etc etc.
Dutchess County actually has a considerable surplus of $$$ right now, but few of these nonprofits are receiving any of it.
Electing progressive-minded County legislators is completely doable!
I mean, we’re talking about elections here that can be won easily with 100 votes.
We’ll take back the Dutchess County Legislature in 2017, and we’ll take back the United States of America in 2020!
###
I almost didn’t go to the DCPAA meeting.
At 6:30 at night here, it might as well be midnight, and it was pouring rain. I hate driving even under the best conditions.
But I’d promised the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress a ride.
The Former Democratic Candidate for Congress suggested a shortcut. The shortcut took me through a maze of narrow, twisting country backroads. I’d forgotten how to operate the defroster on my car. And the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress was regaling me with her latest adventures with anal/rectal cancer –
“Yes, they’re gonna take it all out!” she said cheerfully. “I’ll spend the rest of my life with a bag.”
One of the things I actually like about the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress is her affect. I have never known her to be bent out of shape by anything but social injustice. The vicissitudes of her own life she accepts very matter-of-factly.
“And then I asked the doctor, ‘So what if this doesn’t work? How much pain are we looking at?’” she went on. “’Oh, a lot,’ he said. ‘But we’ll give you morphine. And, of course, you’ll have access to all the latest assisted suicide technology – ‘”
I’d slowed my car to about 20 miles an hour, and I felt like a goddam parade marshal because there was a line of cars in back of me that probably stretched back an eighth of a mile. Some of those drivers were actually honking.
Well, this is it, I thought. One of those cars – driven, no doubt, by an enraged Trump supporter who instinctively knows I’m a progressive – is gonna go all Mad Max on me, ram his car into me. Get out of his car and shoot me through the window. I will die listening to the Former Democratic Candidate for Congress babble about anal/rectal cancer.
Fortunately, at that very moment, some circuit in my aging brain kicked in, and I remembered how to use my defroster!
On the way home, I drove back a different way, on a route I was familiar with.
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