People focus so much on presidential elections, but the intrusion of freedoms and use of force against the citizen is largely at the municipal and state level.
Also, I've noticed that people care greatly about misspent federal dollars, and don't seem to notice when all local city or county contracts go to someone in the local government's brother or cousin.
I know the federal dollars are larger, but the disconnect is just astounding.
What got me involved in local politics was when the local county board asked a group of us to write a grant for federal and state dollars to fund a rural transportation program. This would be curb to curb service, at a very low rate. Turns out we were the only county classified as 'rural' in our state that did not have this grant.
They brought us in 2 months before the deadline, after 5 years and 10 months of doing nothing with the grant but sitting on it and not publicizing it. They were confused why we couldn't put together a multiple-hundred page research document in two months.
I was confused why they seemed so slapdash with this process. Until I realized one of the board members' brother and sister owned the only 'taxi' service that served areas outside of the 'city'.
I live in the Bay Area, which as you probably know has a shortage of new housing construction. The town I live in has a councilmember that is a staunch opponent of state-level housing regulations and regularly votes against new housing projects in the town (or votes for less units, more difficulties on the developer, etc.)
Surprise surprise, the councilmember, and her husband, are both realtors with a personal interest in keeping the housing market tight. And of course, no recusals when it comes to discussing policies or issues that she would benefit from as a realtor.
The number of conflicts of interest at the municipal level is crazy, to the point of being depressing sometimes.
In my area the city had been paying the owners of a golf course thousands of dollars every year to have first dibs on the rights to purchase that land if and when the owners ever decided to sell it.
A few years ago the golf course owners finally decided to sell. The mayor of the city (a real estate developer) decided that the city did not want to buy that land...and then bought the land for himself in a private transaction.
This is an incredibly important point in this debate. Almost all of the institutions people want to change are controlled at these lower levels of government. Even with federal legislation, all of the implementation will be up to lower level governments. But most of the things people want to change can only be changed at the City level, they're outside the federal governments jurisdiction.
Crucially, this means that a lot of these issues can be addressed without navigating party politics. There are plenty of cities and states that are controlled top to bottom by one party (they exist for both parties). So either party should be able to more or less unilaterally pass these changes.
IMO if you're not talking about fixing this at municipal and state levels you're more interested in party politics than fixing it.
This is a really good point. Local elections may be even more important, and are definitely easier to have an impact on. Local governments also - from my anecdotal impression - seem to have a lot more corruption, probably because they often go ignored.
Both parties focus all attention on the national level. (Also, Democrats are especially hampered as the things they want tend to require congressional action more.) It's a toxic exercise in impotence, dejection, and at best, change with is still very slow and indirect.
Anything that focuses energy at the local level is a huge step. Both parties will be caught with their pants down. Issues are concrete and visceral, and do not require a high education to understand. It is by far the best way to fix the governance of this country.
Local issues have a history of been deemed non-partisan, which means the everyday conservatism of single family zoning, hyper local funding of everything, etc. could rot out the culture completely by stealth post-WWII even before the more well-known rise in policing and decline in social services began the 70s and 80s.
All elections are important. State and local laws can't protect you from federal policy, and so the presidential election is arguably as important as any other, if not more important related to individual rights. As the president picks Supreme Court nominations, which are approved by Congress, all of these elections are important. The Supreme Court has been instrumental in reinterpreting existing laws, in order to make explicit how laws are meant to work and be implemented. This has caused things like gay marriage to now be legal, which is clearly consistent with our Constitutional values spirit; the letter of the law was used to discriminate contrary to the intent of the law.
I'm sure if I worked at a company like Facebook, my day to day work-life and experiences would be primarily dictated by my managers, and perhaps their managers. But at the end of the day, Zuck is at the top, and people ultimately listen to him.
Not to knock your point. Political activism needs to be local, but there is a reason there is so much focus on the president. I don't think it is unwarranted.
