You would make a great Communications Director for a candidate! As a Unitarian Universalist I share many of your same values, and have held them since I was a teenage hippie in the 70s. I am really hoping that we can come out of the current fiasco with a view towards a more equitable future. Mamdani is the best role model for excellent positive messaging combined with competent governance.
Our property tax bill came this week, and with it a survey to gauge local sentiment as we head into town-charter-revision season. It was not a particularly well-written survey [this is part of what I do for a living, so I am judgmental] but some of the questions were so pointed and squirmy!!
"Are you in favor of reducing town services in order to maintain lower tax rates? Y/N"
"Which services would you prefer to see reduced: library hours / town office hours / children's recreation programs / road paving / etc etc etc"
Your theoretical answer to the "do you denounce Defund the Police" question feels to me like it fits in this same space – I care so much less about the exact particulars of how we're dismantling, and am so much more interested in what we build instead!
(One of the things I'm constantly impressed with about Mamdani's comms team – who should be teaching masterclasses in this! – is making it so clear and straightforward that govt programs can and should serve the people, and that's what tax dollars are actually for. Filling potholes! Making parks fun and safe! Fixing problems!)
Hello was this a very rambly comment, yes it was!!!
You know that I'm absolutely with you on every piece of this. And I'll confess to being prone to frustration when I have to "translate" a slogan like "defund the police", which is short, to the point, and entirely sensical (There is finite money in budgets. If we prioritize one thing, we de-prioritize another. Moving funding from punishment to community uplift and empowerment is proven to have positive downstream effects.) into a treatise on how budgets are moral documents.
I realize this is based in being a word nerd who feels like reflecting on my own knee-jerk reactions to other people's sloganeering to listen for the nuance underneath is my job, not theirs'. But then I'm brought back around to having to reflect on my response to other folks' reactions to my sloganeering, and the unending loop between emotional intelligence and discourse just spins and spins and spins until I'm dizzy.
Media wants the soundbite, the branded slogan. But then you give it to them and you get accused of being simplistic. No, my friend. Your reading is simplistic. Think critically for a moment. SIGH.
You would make a great Communications Director for a candidate! As a Unitarian Universalist I share many of your same values, and have held them since I was a teenage hippie in the 70s. I am really hoping that we can come out of the current fiasco with a view towards a more equitable future. Mamdani is the best role model for excellent positive messaging combined with competent governance.
Our property tax bill came this week, and with it a survey to gauge local sentiment as we head into town-charter-revision season. It was not a particularly well-written survey [this is part of what I do for a living, so I am judgmental] but some of the questions were so pointed and squirmy!!
"Are you in favor of reducing town services in order to maintain lower tax rates? Y/N"
"Which services would you prefer to see reduced: library hours / town office hours / children's recreation programs / road paving / etc etc etc"
Your theoretical answer to the "do you denounce Defund the Police" question feels to me like it fits in this same space – I care so much less about the exact particulars of how we're dismantling, and am so much more interested in what we build instead!
(One of the things I'm constantly impressed with about Mamdani's comms team – who should be teaching masterclasses in this! – is making it so clear and straightforward that govt programs can and should serve the people, and that's what tax dollars are actually for. Filling potholes! Making parks fun and safe! Fixing problems!)
Hello was this a very rambly comment, yes it was!!!
They will call me a loser, too.
Don't care, as long as I am the person I want to be, working for what I believe.
You know that I'm absolutely with you on every piece of this. And I'll confess to being prone to frustration when I have to "translate" a slogan like "defund the police", which is short, to the point, and entirely sensical (There is finite money in budgets. If we prioritize one thing, we de-prioritize another. Moving funding from punishment to community uplift and empowerment is proven to have positive downstream effects.) into a treatise on how budgets are moral documents.
I realize this is based in being a word nerd who feels like reflecting on my own knee-jerk reactions to other people's sloganeering to listen for the nuance underneath is my job, not theirs'. But then I'm brought back around to having to reflect on my response to other folks' reactions to my sloganeering, and the unending loop between emotional intelligence and discourse just spins and spins and spins until I'm dizzy.
Media wants the soundbite, the branded slogan. But then you give it to them and you get accused of being simplistic. No, my friend. Your reading is simplistic. Think critically for a moment. SIGH.