Upper Valley Vibes Episode 5: "I voted!" Now what?

Last month, millions of people turned out to vote in the 2024 elections. I voted stickers made their way across social media, ads and signs littered our internet and streets for weeks and months leading up to it, and billions was spent on the whole thing.

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But, the truth is that voting for president is only a drop in the bucket compared to the number of opportunities that our system of government makes available for us all to be involved in. In fact, our systems are designed specifically to have more of us more involved regularly. At the same time many people are looking for ways to get involved, many local communities are struggling to find people to help out. Let's fix that!

In this episode, we talk a bit about how much attention has shifted to the presidency from the nation's original founding, and cover five areas that if you have energy, ideas, to get more involved you can start doing tomorrow. Some of you will already be familiar with at least some of these, but hopefully there are some ideas in here that can provide you or anyone you know some inspiration or guidance on ways they can get more involved beyond just voting.

We talk about five nonpartisan, accessible, and impactful ways that anyone get more involved:

1. Why voting for other levels of governments, especially at the local, is so important

2. The need, simply, for better people to run for office, whether you yourself think you're up to the task or perhaps you may know someone who could be a great leader

3. Serving on a statutory or advisory board at a local level and helping guide policies, make recommendations, or make decisions in a wide range of areas

4. Helping out on a shorter term basis, such as volunteer days, volunteering during elections, helping on a river cleanup, or other things local businesses and groups routinely need help with on

5. Helping connect people around you to better and more information about their local governance, such as through journalism, town meeting voter guides, being a good Civic Citizen, and more.

Are there other ways you have found helpful in getting involved? Send anything I missed or any questions over to me at alex@rethinklocal.us.

Episode links:

• American Nations:

  • https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11140803-american-nations

• Decision in Philadelphia

  • https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/619794.Decision_in_Philadelphia

• A quick summary and further reading on the presidential election

  • https://csac.history.wisc.edu/document-collections/constitutional-debates/executive-branch/

• How many elected officials are there in the US?

  • https://poliengine.com/blog/how-many-politicians-are-there-in-the-us

  • Note: I believe this may be undercounting with many local official positions elected in certain parts of the country but not in others, or not well kept track of such as judges in some state, mosquito control warden, or trustees of trust funds, library trustees, etc.

This is a special episode that I'm posting in December to both of my podcasts, Rethinking and Upper Valley Vibes. On one hand it's the holiday season and taking a quick break from the time required for having and editing discussions which will resume on Upper Valley Vibes in January with some great stuff lined up, but also, I've had so many conversations with people about wanting to get more involved after this really intense presidential election - so I recorded this special episode to help provide some information for people looking for some ways to invest their time and energy in helping contribute to their community or others around them beyond voting for president. I hope you find this information valuable and have a great and relaxing holiday season with family and friends, and if you have any suggestions of things I missed for this episode that I should add to the list, please send them over to me at alex@rethinklocal.us.