It’s an Election Year, How can I Make a Difference?

It’s 2022. Mid-term elections are this year. Most people feel involved by watching televised debates or if one is really making an effort, perhaps, searching and watching YouTube videos or watching mainstream news channels or Googling information or reading one’s favorite news feeds. Much of our effort is passive observation or just too little, too late. We’re busy working, paying bills, providing for our families, entertaining ourselves or just recovering recovering. By the time many people start to put in the time to “make a difference” campaigns are in the final lap of the race. Like everything else in our fast paced lives, we’re just trying to keep up. If you want to see change, well, I hate to break it to you but you need to be the change. The only way any change comes about is by doing something different than you used to do. So do your research and then get involved.

So what does getting involved look? I suggest starting where the candidates themselves start: local first, then work out from there. The most basic involvement is to call your city or county office to find out what election district you live in. Every neighborhood is in a district and every neighborhood is represented within that district. When you call, make sure to ask for a contact number of the person representing your neighborhood. Call that person and ask how you can help. If there is no representation ask If you can be the representative. Pro tip: it is the neighborhood representative who first begins the momentum of which issues will be taken up locally and then broadly. These initial representative positions are volunteer. As a result of this, the majority of districts do not have an active representative. It is important to note, this doesn’t mean there is no one representing, only that most are not active. Therefore, if you are willing to bring some organization and clarity to the table and begin to gather others together in your neighborhood to discuss collective concerns, then you have an edge and can more easily work your way into becoming the representative yourself. This is actually the very first step to understanding how campaigning works as well as learning how to execute a successful campaign. It is also the best position from which to learn about candidates, platforms and how the whole system works. From this very first step, the sky is the limit!