 Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming. My name is Mike Ashew, I'm a philosophy instructor at the University of Vermont. And this event is the last event in a week-long event called Public Philosophy Week, which is the brainchild of Tyler Goggins, my colleague in the philosophy department. So for the past week all around Burlington, there have been these public discussions. And the idea is to have a kind of low-key informal conversation around a host of philosophical topics, education, democracy, philosophy of art. There was a presentation on the show assistant. And so where the idea is to have informal kind of conversations around a variety of topics. So three years, was it three years ago when we were here? We had a talk here on the philosophy of wine, and it was an incredible storm that took down all sorts of trees and stuff. All the cheer, blowing up against the glass, all the power went out and I sat around like that one. So we continue. That happens again. So the topic I chose to present on that I've been thinking a lot about, I am chair of the Select Board in Shelburne. And this is an interesting opportunity for me to bring two kind of areas of my life together, philosophy and sitting engagement. Why do people get involved in multiple politics? Why do people get involved in their community in this way? I've had lots of kind of philosophical issues, perk up and bubble up to talk, things about who am I representing when I make a decision here? What does it mean to talk about what's best for Shelburne? Am I just here to do what everybody wants me to do? Should I call all the people I know and say like, what do you think? Am I here to exercise my judgment? So I have a lot of these kind of interesting about me. I'm not curious, it's going to be interesting to other people. The question is about like, what is it being to get involved in civic stuff? So when I think about this, I think about municipal, local, community sort of politics and getting involved in the community in a variety of ways. But of course I proposed this topic and then I said what does civic actually mean? I don't even know what I'm asking you. So I went and looked this up and did a little research. There's a long tradition of thinking about the role of the citizen process and the person who's engaged in their community and in their local education designed to kind of facilitate municipal government, the local government, but also federal government. So a lot of thinking about why people should get involved or whether they even should. So there's a strain of thought. It says only public servants need to concern themselves with being involved in the community. I don't think that's really a model we think about today. So I have all these questions about this and I thought I would share them and ask people why. Number one, there are times when I literally say why am I doing this? I think we all have that experience where you recognize you're making a sometimes really kind of crazy sacrifice. You're putting yourself at risk of being publicly chastised and scrutinized. You're putting yourself at risk of making errors. What if you make a decision on behalf of the town and it's a pinky-pinky bad one? Are you going to get land-raised in public? So there's a lot of into like why would you put yourself in that position to be criticized when you think any way you're trying to be helpful. So I have all these questions that I'm under. I also wonder what is it being to do what's being tested for the shelter? But I wanted to start with why put yourself out in the public and at sort of at risk of being criticized or at risk of being publicly scrutinized. Why do it anyway? Is it a hobby? Is it a skill? Is it a passion? Is it a duty? Do you feel like you have an obligation? So why do people get involved in community politics? So I'm just going to propose all of you a lot of them and go right now. I'm not going to go through all of these. I'm going to ask questions and see what people think. So the first one is why do people get involved in their community in terms of civic engagement? And what's the reason that people do this if anybody wants to share? So I'm curious. Yes, Judy? Well, because it's way more interesting to be engaged than to be a live standard. For one thing. It's exciting. You mean it's mentally sort of interesting to be involved? It's enjoyable? No, but enjoyable. It seems that being a live standard is being passive and being engaged is taking part and trying to be an aide of good results but also just being engaged with other people in your community. So I often find that the problems that we issue are just interesting, kind of like puzzles sometimes. Like, here's an interesting kind of, how do we think about this? And so that sounded like part of what you were saying. It's sort of just an interesting challenge. But the agency thing for me too, you know, one of the reasons I've gotten involved is because of my frustration with national politics and feeling like a useless individual. Like, how can I make a difference in the world? Say, hey, I can demonstrate to the agency here. So, Andrew, you were going to... Oh, it's a sacred knee. My parents did it. So there's a little sense of like, my mom was on the library board, my dad volunteered to coach, you know, multi-use sports and that was kind of my entry. And then I grew up as a faculty brat as they called me at a prep school. And the motto of the school was Latin, basically not to be served, but to serve. And there was this sort of philosophy of like, okay, you've got privilege, but you need to do something with it. You know, growing up there and kind of hearing that and doing it, it's just always been something that's been instilled in me, is that wherever I go, I get involved in something in that community. Is it... One of the things I was looking at in history is this notion that it's a duty of a citizen to involve themselves in local governance in some way. Is that how you do it? Yeah, and I would echo what Judy said, right? I'd much rather be an active participant than sit on the sidelines in Richmond. Like as a coach in sports sheets, see all these people sitting on the sidelines, yelling at their raps yelling at their coaches, it's like, hey, we need raps, we want to volunteer. You know, so it's that same idea of like, I'm putting my money where I'm at. Jump in there versus sit in the plane. And that's a cowardly role, I think. Are you not going to be complaining? Wow. Well, I mean, I've just learned that in terms of when I coach or when I'm a parent, it doesn't add any value. So you're going to figure out ways to add value. So for me, in terms of volunteering, that's it. Yeah. It seems like there's so many ways to answer this question. I mean, I think sometimes it's a passion around a particular issue that you want to help affect change. And sometimes it's more personal about just wanting something stimulating in your life and having a sense of belonging to your community. I mean, I don't think a lot about this since this came up that people like you have young families and are working as opposed to us who are retired. I was so wrapped up in my work during the time I was working. I had very little time for other things. So when retirement came around, it was like, okay, so now I have time. What are the things I want to do? So I find it really interesting when I see people like you and I can see people who are able to give and still manage the rest of their day-to-day lives. All my work questions. Might do. But it's interesting. I mean, that is an issue that it tends to be a sort of thing that people with leisure time are capable of doing. But then you get a natural shift in the representation of the people you're supposed to be representing. And so it's kind of interesting. One of the things I'm interested about, so I always encourage everybody, everybody should get involved. Particularly in a town like this, where there's just a lot of opportunities, not even municipally, but just in all sorts of civic ways, the Rotary Club, the various civic organizations. So I encourage everybody, but hardly one does. Like, maybe it's really not for everybody. There are some people that don't necessarily have skillsets. So in the history of thinking about this, there was sort of the public servant. The person who dedicated their time and their efforts to their community. I don't think we think that today. I think we think everybody should be involved, regardless. But then the question is, like, you know, not everybody. I mean, I don't know how good to say that. I don't want to say that, everybody. If I would have a list of all of you and Joe and said, you, you, you, you. Like, then we'd have everybody doing everything, we'd be great in a way. But I don't think it, it, it is for everybody. I think that there are people who are drawn to it. I think there are people who are better at it than others. So I don't know if everybody, so this is one of the things, you know, should everybody feel of beauty or an obligation to participate in civic life? Are they doing something long? If they say, I'm just going to raise my kids, golf on the weekends. I know a lot of people like this in Sheldon, right? I mean, I talk to people in the gym and it's like, you know, we just passed a little option tax. What's that? It's a little, like, what? You don't know it. You don't know it. Did you vote? No? No? So, you know, a lot of people are very happy and I can't blame them. They have their lives. You know, maybe that's fine. So should everybody, because you sort of made it sound like it was great that I was doing what everybody should be doing. Well, I don't think there should I think there are different ways of doing your civic duty and some of that could be just being a good person and raising good kids and doing well at your job. You know, my job happens to be in education so I felt like I was serving the community in that. And so, I don't think, I'm seeing no judgment in it. People have different skill sets, as I said. Yeah, good. Yeah, I think that the way that I see that question is that now people should be involved that it feels accessible to be involved and that people feel like they have someone to go to who they can say, I'm not involved in what I'm going to do in this way and this is how I do it. And I think that the government is so convoluted that you need the common person. You need your neighbor to be doing something. You need someone in the community that will be doing something so you feel like you're going to be doing something. In the end, what I can do is that my dad, who I live in New Jersey, my dad was part of the New Jersey Historic Committee and he's like 16. He was the youngest person on the board. And he ended up quitting. And the reason he did this is because he said that they had 16 years about doing something and then he said, okay, we should do something. And he said, no, seven more weeks. It's accessible to be made in change. I agree. I agree. That is one of our long-dress, actually. I mean, this is kind of the risk aversion element about being in the city. I mean, doing, you know, any board, committee, commission, but definitely on the select board, there's a tendency, I can understand this. Let's think about it longer. Let's think of, let's do another study. Let's scope out another, you know, because everybody is concerned that they're going to make a mistake. I think a lot of people are worried that they're going to mess something up. So there's a lot of risk aversion, which is understandable. You're a steward with other people's resources and you don't, but anyway. But there's also a lot of, and we have people who are sort of changing resistance, so it's interesting. It is, it is also partly frustrating because, I mean, if anybody that's gone on a committee knows, you can spend a lot of time talking and kind of going around and around and over stuff. So, you know, there are some costs to it. Well, as one of our colleagues said to me as I joined that, you know, every decision we make, we piss off about 10% of the town. So after 10 decisions, you can piss off the whole town. So yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of things to do and this is a duty that every, you know, duty is kind of our, when I use the concept of duty of my undergraduates, they sort of recall the like, this idea that I have a duty. So duty is kind of sort of grates on some use. So I just mean, do you feel like you are, you have some, and if I say obligation, people kind of do the same thing. Do people have an obligation or a duty to involve themselves in civic life? In the life of their community or in the life of their municipal government? Yeah. Well, we have civic engagement, which is what you're talking about here. I think it's a, it's a, it's a very broad, I do not believe that everyone has an obligation to be involved in government, per se. But I do believe that everyone has a responsibility to contribute in some way to making their community stronger. Yeah. Whether it's through coaching or through teaching or through nursing or through being involved in government, as opposed to just taking it. Yeah. Do you think voting is enough if the person tells us? No. I mean, I think it's important but I don't think so. Okay. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I think it happened to have some sort of a vision of where you are and what you'd like it to be and you may decide at that point in time yes, how I want to be, I want to see if I can make a little bit of a positive difference or something in more of the direction that I'd like to see something to go. Yeah. Go into it. But if you don't have that kind of, I guess idea somewhere, at least in the back of your mind, it's probably not something for you. I think, it may not be the majority of the people that feel like that in fact. What about people that get involved, somebody mentioned this for a single issue or a specific issue topic? That has a positive and negative sometimes a single issue kind of television can be a detriment rather than a positive. I think a lot of people do start involvement in government and in some kind of quasi-government organization because it's a particular issue I think this should be such from my side. I'd like to get it there. One, I was going to mention, as I see it, there's a threshold and if you have a passion to really engage in have something to occur here you get involved. Don't hear just living a life that's just fine. If you have a technical skill that profession and you can make a contribution well that's something to probably put you over that threshold to get involved. Kind of like a doctor in Hippocratic Creek if you can help there is not necessarily an obligation or a duty but there is certainty. Well it sounds like you wanted to say you ought to but you were refraining from that. Like if you have a skill and you could be helpful to your community it would be nice to do it or you ought to do it. Again that's the threshold and you want to engage. You want to be part of that process and you have that skill set then you are and must qualify but you have something to contribute and I think that's part of the motivation to get over that threshold and not wanting to engage because if there is a mention of an offset there is a risk going on I feel like each person comes in with a certain set of values and things that they care about and each person can find if they look for it the thing that they are really passionate about and it's really likely that since as someone said before civic engagement is a pretty broad subject that you can find something that fits even if it's not necessarily a community even if it's something regional or if it was national it could affect a bunch of different communities including your own and once you find that thing that you're really passionate about then once you fully commit to that I would say it's a recommendation to be involved in civic engagement in some way rather than non-communication but to live well it's personally having this conversation about this so many people in our world in our community who are functioning at a survival level who have no capacity given the demands that surround them I'm thinking about this at all and so I think we do have to absolutely I think that's really important I'm constantly aware in Shelter of how our privilege and our demographics we have a lot of community involvement and a lot of it is a function of demographic and privilege that people have the luxury to be able to do that I agree and it's worth thinking about that yeah I think I would say what we should think too it does us all a disservice to for example I'm obviously able to involve the government as far as gay rights and the reason is because I don't have time to be involved with everything else and I think it's very important the effort and the issue is directly making their quality of life worse and I think it's also a disservice to think about it as there don't the time to think about things that we consider political issues because there's a lot of people who don't have time to put in the effort that are being impacted I'm entering for outright remote right now which works with queer youth and we're getting a couple calls every day at this point asking about who will be located into a lot and this is affecting so many people's lives and it's important to so do you see your work CJ as a civic for YouTube I think it does definitely make it easy with a lot of people in the government outside the government and working outside the government to change it as opposed to working within the government and depending on where you fall not to be a solid expert question I would first say no, but I would argue you would say yes I think he's definitely yes yeah that's the thing, when you were doing your research on civic what did civic mean then it means community but it means the government the government is the representative of the community so you get these ideas of like republicanism where what you're trying to do is cultivate and it fits into kind of class thing and aristocracy you're trying to cultivate this aristocracy that's capable of you know so there's very few people, they're civic servants they're trained to be municipal so the point is there have been times in history where civic meant the government right working for the government as a representative of the people I think in our day and age we're engaged in this kind of I think what's the term that I've heard democratic liberation we're getting the other groups to talk about issues that are really important to us and figure out how to implement those kinds of policies and you know it's great about the monarchy, it's very local so it's very you've got this as true around the country you've got these elements of local government that make it possible for community members to get into groups and talk about what kind of road it's getting what kind of advice do we want that's still with us we have that civic notion of civic now we also have community engagement community involvement so it's sort of interesting people think of civic as some people think of it as being involved in local government some people think of it as being involved in local organizations community groups in particular issues that are most important to them most relevant to their concerns so I think it's all sort of all of that I mean when I started thinking about this I was like actually sure what am I talking about civic engagement could be local government it could be community it could be working with the Boy Scouts it could be working with the Rotary so all of these I think we consider civic engagement so it's just sort of interesting the various motivations and reasons why people engage but also who are we doing it that's one of the other issues which has come up several times which is is it self is it enlightened self-interest it's my community I mean I look around and I think I want to live in a place that I like to live in so I would like to get involved in various issues sometimes there are issues that are more relevant to my particular interests but in my case I'm working on a select board I think there's that element too of a sort of enlightened self-interest the best way to get the outcomes in the community I want is to get involved in the community and contribute to getting the outcomes that I want and that's part of this kind of agency yes they are serving the community in a way where they don't necessarily have time but they are serving anyway like as a teacher or services all the things that like go to them because they are serving the community there are these organizations that help you I'm rescue and fire and police which are the emergency response services and you know it's also interesting volunteering versus being in sort of these quasi volunteer quasi paid like our emergency responders are given stipend but they are clearly doing this I mean they are not doing it for money that's for sure they are doing it because they love being community oriented so you know that's interesting too when you get these groups of people who are chief of our fire our rescue department Jacob Leopold is incredibly committed to providing the best emergency response services again it's sort of like clearly like a motivation for him to be this community type of oriented person and then trying to figure out how to draw on that and draw those in Lee sorry No this is great so I was thinking there are many ways to participate in the community and I think it's participation more than serving the people who are elected you clearly are serving the people who serve on committees are serving to me what's most important is for everyone in the community to feel I'm part of this community and I have an obligation as part of this community to participate participating in many ways but for us which includes being informed about what's going on around you and what the issues are and learning about it and whether you weigh in or not if you're happy, fine, it's not but if you're not informed and you're only thinking about I'll just let them do their things let them do their things but before you know it it's going to hit me across the street for me there's going to be something that I didn't know could happen but if I participated early on they would have known and so how do you get people to participate how do you get people to vote town meeting 20% of the people voting 20% now that's not community involvement community participation community engagement and how we and select board can't do this all the time how the community can somehow understand if I'm not involved I don't know they don't get that I just want to say I think that what's way more important is the feeling that we all face this place of togetherness that we're all kind of aware of each other and I think with that I think that if you know there are four neighbors there or they're having a conversation about town meeting they're going to have a conversation in their car and I think that the human connection is the first layer of specific engagement so I appreciate that a lot but I'm going to push back in a kind of odd way one of the interesting things I have discovered when I kind of get engaged in town fairs is that I have a common interest with people who I might not even under normal circumstances like very much like I realized that we have some common concern that we can kind of work out together and it turns out like I don't need to like them or feel emotionally connected to them or feel like we're in the same you know I'm not saying in a mean way it's like this is a person that if we were at war drinking our politics would be exactly the opposite our view on social issues would be totally different for some reason when we're talking about like this bike path we can talk together and kind of figure so I've this is I was going to talk about Rousseau because this is one of Rousseau's ideas is that when you engage in Rousseau as a political philosopher a French political philosopher so he said it's sort of a founding figure of a lot of liberal democratic ideas he says when you engage in common rational interest that's when you realize that what connects us all is this kind of respect and it's respect for our you recognize in other people you're a rational person who wants good things to happen in your life the way I want to have in my life so let's kind of work together to make this happen together and so it's this kind of like rational self-interest to you that we get together in a community to work on things because we see it in our best interest but we also see it as in the interest of everybody that we realize we're all sort of engaged in this collective project to make a better community so it's not like you have a familial relationship a close affectionate relationship with respect of the rational agents kind of figuring out like how can I make my community better yeah there's a lot of obligation in this in a sense of control we see it as being out of the community and so you have an obligation to contribute to this one but I think there are a lot of people who aren't don't have that like two-way relationship with the society within the department and so then I wonder does the people who aren't do serve in the society have an obligation yeah we have a good question and do the people that are being served have obligations that are so what are our obligations to the people who can't participate for the reasons you've said or what are our I don't know the answer do you have an answer to this? I mean I think I don't think you necessarily have an obligation in a sense to make society better for people who aren't putting in like trying to make you feel more interested but there is like a rational self-interest or maybe you do not get involved to try to make a society that does yeah do you think you but I can't tell if you think you ought to or if it would just be nice if you did, if you had the time I mean I don't think there's an obligation there okay I would say oftentimes the best change comes from those who are outsiders and they fight to become insiders right so if you don't feel like you have an obligation you're never going to get it whether it's civil rights, gay rights people that are bothered and fight their way in I think you're finding a way because you feel you have an obligation for other people who aren't being served or you see that in your society it's imperfect and you want to make it better but I feel like there is still an obligation for people who are in the same position as you that's necessarily an obligation for society really you don't think you have an obligation to slide into the board? when I say that I think when I see people who aren't being served in the government I feel like I honestly continue to talk to them about why they're not served by the government and have conversations with them about how they feel that they need to what is the structural change that would make them feel more sensitive because I think it could be like in the United States why people still would be more receptive to this government and I think that we have it's necessary for us to talk to people who aren't being structured and ask them why so you're talking about justice right and achieving justice in your community I think that's definitely one of the things one of the things that we should be doing right ensuring a just and fair community where people are treated fairly I'm also wondering whether it's not just talking to them about how they're not being served by inviting them in in these ways making room for them to participate because I don't think there's always that avenue for people to or that they even know how to come in like I've been on some boards who purposely want representation from the people that they're serving and so that's a very conservative effort to say we need to make space we need to actually invite and hold some hands and bring people in Yeah, absolutely Yeah, I was thinking what you said was that and what CJ said was that Could you speak about Yeah, I'm just spitting on what you both said what CJ said was that and I think I was kind of touching on that earlier was that it's almost like a judgment of that you're not you're not participating but if you are within a framework that isn't getting served or you are working so hard to just make your ends meet and your life to be a place where you can peace and you can sleep and shelter you are engaging in the community because you don't have the bandwidth to do that but you do have that bandwidth to come to them like you can't say that they're not participating because they are so how do you reach out and make sure that they are having voice, that they are having representation that they are having time that they are having their needs met even if that means there's a community number that you say, I will come and watch your children so you can come the time that you need it or I will promote your dinner for you I mean these are simple ways that you can engage and make sure that those people that don't have the resources at the time where the bandwidth to attend so this made me think there's this philosopher named W.D. Ross this is a concept people are probably familiar with, he imagines sort of who we are most obligated to or who we ought to be concerned most about is kind of series of concentric circles so you have your family your immediate family and maybe your cousin's distant family and maybe your neighbors and maybe your community and then sort of your nation and then you can think like if you have a lot, if you don't have limited time you gotta hit the inside circles and start to work your way out once you care for the people closest to you, you care for the then you can kind of start working your way out do you think that's true so if you have limited time should you don't have your time I mean if you're really swamped and you're trying to get bread on the table should you give 10 minutes a month because that's, or should you say no I gotta deal with my family my kids, my relatives the people that are closest to me I think they don't even have the opportunity to work on their inner circle in that same way push it out with the further needs of how their community can serve their circle because they don't have the van so they need help they don't even have that same vision because they're just created with their own you can't even look outside that yeah, thanks, yeah, Gail I think it's a matter of engagement and for myself I've always found myself somewhere because I was already there thinking about what's important to me to see better in the world or whatever and so when I worked with EDM and I worked with students who were in service learning I used to say I've had a horizontal career ladder because even in my career I would move from thing to thing because I was already there and sometimes I got jobs because I was invited to take a job and I didn't know what was happening and what I've ended up spending most of my last years on recently all began because when I was pretty young I read a book called Reading the Woods and it helped me understand the environment in some way you know I had no background in that but I've always sort of had this internal sense of doing something that seemed like it was important and I don't know that it was necessarily important to me but it just aroused a passion to be engaged in that particular thing in environment situations not necessarily that I mean at one point Swisher was banking me and she on the table and I said we don't talk to each other so I stoned around it just was a simple thing but it's always brought me to a place where I was passionate about what I was doing and sometimes that led to another passion yeah but are you saying this was often civic minded and your passions brought you to issues that were important to you in the community I think they came at different times depending on where I was in my life and I had a benefit of having times when I needed something and people who I never knew were there reached out and they're really never really struck something in me that I made stuff with me because I think you need to reach out and you need to have your eyes open and see what's happening around you and act on it for your very own personal growth as well as for what it can do for the person next to you not an obligation it's just a fulfillment yeah what about what about how do you define what it means I don't know I'm still a vessel I'm not quite sure because part of it is it's something that has changed in different periods what it means so the idea that that I don't think most people in society are being involved in the community with being involved in their local government or even their state government I think people find other ways to be but it is definitely the community from civilization and the whole root of the word is community but there have been periods where it's been focused on the local government or even more low national or state level or more regional let's say and sometimes it's not at all I think we live in an age and it's not fairly in terms of the local government but I do think the local government and being involved in local municipal operations generally is a different kind of civic engagement it's just a different it's a very interesting kind of I sometimes want to say to young kids like if you want all this stuff that didn't happen any boards of admissions because as a what I mean people don't people that do it want to do and people want to do it for a variety of reasons so I don't think it is then people have all their other civic goals and things they want to do so I just think it's a different kind of involvement in the community it's not what it used to be I think that's partly sort of the moment where I think there's been a real decline of interest in the local government but it's also that there's all these other competing forms in which you can be involved in the community and people enjoy those too so so yeah yeah there's a decline in participation in civic in government have anything to do with the decline in educating students about civics for boxing that's the other interesting issue about this whole tradition of civic engagement is education was key and has always been key in fact I got this quote that I thought was sort of interesting from Tocqueville town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science they bring it within the people's reach they teach men how to use and have them enjoy it so he's saying like civic government is how we teach people how to be autonomous free individuals involved it's education and we should be educating we educate our kids and voting and being involved in all sorts of public activities and support the community there's obviously a lot to be said about educating you and we have in town we have high school even now we have 11 11 year olds on our commissions and boards because we're trying to teach people should be involved in their community so there's this very strong educational component where it's almost like we're passing along a tradition this is what you do you manage your community you take care of the community you get involved in these things well I feel like the way that I get involved in civic has shifted a lot there's not as much emphasis on being a part of your local community but it's like pretty deep in your face a lot of the time there's all these pains going on a lot farther it's shifted a lot to petitions and government protests let me read you a quote as far as this is from a historian as far back as evidence can be found and virtually without exception in every age young adults seem to have been less attached to civic life than their parents or grandparents so what he's saying is it also seems to be like a function to get older when you get older you tend to get more involved in these sorts of activities that's a great response I was curious about that can you call that a bias because I've worked with the other students so they all seem to be pretty engaged in our engagement we have an age and it is largely in the larger context of the world there's so much coming at it at the fast pace of the larger issues that do affect smaller communities they're seeing how this is affecting the broader world and actually and it's overwhelming but they're trying to make shame on a larger community we're just going right or it's a different attitude about like I agree there are big issues that the young I remember first I remember some of that so I didn't think the culture has changed in the way that they're engaged in it because it's so big I think a loss of civic participation which resonates I mean deeply below the level it's very problematic I've taught government for decades so I'm sort of familiar with teaching to high school students but Robert Puck and Robert were called bowling alone which has resonated with me for years about 50 years ago he uses the example of the loss of bowling these and that may sound silly to people because bowling is at this form of bowling in Boston like the sin pin the loss of civic participation has really faded away in town politics I think that's very powerful people don't the exemplar of 25 years of the natural resource committee of someone staying with the committee for those years but there's very few people I think they're all moving into Stonegate Lane and I don't know if the new people are really of any interest or concern that's the scope of it but that's a kind of silly reconstruction conclusions in that and that works really well so do you think all of these are interested do you even discuss that do you talk about what makes the changes people are aware or whether it's more of a decision along the way yeah and it's not a lack of education for a lot of them they should know they just choose not to I'm always like I was thinking that where she said about education and I remember in high school having these discussions in civic subjects I can't even understand what government and community is I think it instills something in you and then with respect to people knowing what they need to do in the community it's also our own but there are so many looking at sources so I'm an ethics committee and children for a while I was doing the salt shed thing and I would get frustrated when I realized people didn't have anything and that was a big issue some people are into it and some people have other things that they're doing and it doesn't mean that they're now I don't know I do sort of agree if you're not paying attention and you don't inform yourself you can't complain if you're angry or frustrated and you're in your community but you weren't paying attention and involving yourself in your community then the answer is I'll get involved in the community or if you were paying attention in the beginning I'll start so my best sister she started with me she went into summer for the first time and she wrote herself in her position and to pass someone and her writing herself in got herself elected because she was going to college in San Francisco I was in the education because I took the time to come I was in the government class and to do that required about 8 years and 5 years because other for the partners I had I didn't take any effort in my own time to get it and I remember in my US two class which was my junior year my teacher in 2009 I wanted to be a teacher in this chapter I didn't have anything else this was going to be the only civics education this was going to be the only civics education you're ever going to get in high school if you do not decide to be a government class that's ridiculous and I need years to work to the free jobs to keep a permanent relationship it's impossible I would like to say although I would say in Sheldon I think documented rules and I don't realize I'm blanking on the rule but it's certain states have a rule and other states don't where if it's not clearly elucidated in my constitution then you get dealings law and I was like what's a dealings law and I have my fifth grader educating me you should know that on the select one walking down the road with the lead education I didn't know what I was talking about and so I googled it what I would is in the state of Vermont and this is a minority I think there's only like 17 states the local municipalities are only allowed to do what the state legislature is talking about so this is called dealings law so whenever we want to think about like what can we do in town we have to go see can we do this and we have to reauthorize charter potentially and so part of it was like excuse my language but that's not crazy you know that like there's these states where the towns have less control over what they do locally than what the state legislature talks about so I was trying to figure out how we can dealings law here in Vermont but it is interesting that yeah it's interesting how it creates certain kinds of incentives and prevents certain other people it's a little complicated okay there was a discussion about our young people today more or less engaged and I think the votes aren't enough I don't think it's confusing but if you look at if you look at us in a sense we are disempowered by what's sort of happening like the local car dealer used to be owned by doesn't happen anymore all the businesses the hardware stores used to be independent that now all got me sort of bump up again today is controlled by someone invisible to us someplace else and the other opposite to that is all of a sudden not all of a sudden for the last I guess almost a generation now we can communicate with almost anybody in the world via the one book that's frightening communication systems that even exist so are we are we less engaged than we were before I think in some ways we're more engaged in other ways I think we feel more and more helpful yeah I mean this experience is I mean I think you're right many people felt engaged in their community through their work yes and that has definitely jumped I feel like we can work in a way that is we're working within our community so our work in our civic life has separated and now you're looking for other avenues to be in a civic I think that's true yeah excuse me yeah it's almost a time where I circle back to community it's like in a world where you can know where you're going to go and they've completely written out racism so yeah the interest is the local level because you do feel like you have control over these kinds of issues and it doesn't feel like we have control over those issues in demographics we have a lot of time and we have a lot of so what does that mean to other communities who don't have that yeah it's been all that too what are our local towns so in a town that has we're focusing on our sidewalks do we care about them that much yeah they're great for moving around but then are we looking at the broader communities nationally thinking about where we're engaging ourselves in that part of life well another interesting thing what is the proper purview right I definitely feel like in my role on the select board I should make sure we have good wastewater treatment so good fire there's core municipal functions but we also have a food shelf an equity diversity committee working on those so what is the we expect from our local government even our regional and state governments different things than we had in the past we also wanted to do in the past to contribute in ways to our lives that we might now but I think a lot of the things that we think about in terms of just in terms of caring for people have been sort of partitioned off and given care for people is not medical care there's emergency care but hospitals are private so so the things that we want our governments to take care of is well we don't look to them to solve whether we should I don't think we look to them to solve a lot of the problems particularly with things like we want affordable housing we want equitable housing we want to create a community where everybody feels welcome no matter what their economic status is but a lot of that is also being driven by non-governmental non-municipal organizations trying to create that and stuff happening yeah it's a lot of diversity but I disagree okay I personally want the kind of thing you're talking about but I think it's pretty clear based on what we're seeing in the larger country that there's an awful lot of people that don't want equality don't want equality don't want the rights don't want people to have health care and so at the local we want to make sure that our citizens have this that's great but what happens when our neighbor down the street says I think you're violating my constitutional rights by allowing this person to have and they have and I take it up to Supreme Court and they say you know what you're right these people should not have affordable housing I was just saying I think we have to look to our local and regional governments to solve it and maybe we should be maybe we should be asking them to do more of those sorts of things what I'm saying is I feel like it would be great if we could but we're faced with this situation where there is this groundswell or national for lack of a better word attack on presuming to say that most and not all people in this room have fairly similar social ethic but that's clear enough it makes me wonder when we talk about whether people have an obligation to participate in civic life you know I think maybe there's some pollution but I should eat the current white supremacist in the room I don't actually civic and civil it's kind of building off of what you're saying I'm sitting here thinking about that I'm not really sure it comes down to the people in our community wherever that community is you know the person next door we've lost civility and I think I need to bring this up because one of the issues is who counts right who's in your civic circle so we're confronted with this problem in Shelburne because we have a housing problem and these are people that come and aren't really quote-unquote members of the community but they're trans so do they count as you know people have asked me this and people will say things like they aren't real residents it's like no what does that mean actually real residents of course they're real residents so you know who counts I do think you know if somebody comes and stays in a hotel in Shelburne it's like welcome to Shelburne welcome to my community and I want you to be a part of it and I do think I have a different attitude to my people that I've never lived here and I've lived here a long time not that it's a better or worse it's just like I expect different things I don't expect them to be up a person staying in a local hotel I don't think they should be up in a local shelter in fact I enjoy talking to them about it but I don't feel like it's your duty you know to be up to see what's happening in town so it is interesting who counts who counts and the only little quad for Vermont local stuff is that I've been here I guess in a dozen years the idea of a town meeting is pretty unique there's not many other states that do that I kind of wish that as a town we had about 20% participation I ran out of photos and I still had hundreds of people who either didn't vote for me or voted for other people but I'm sort of disappointing at the town meeting granted it's hybrid now with Zoom disembodied squares on the screen but in terms of the kids I realized in the next couple years I'm going to bring my youngest son to every town meeting so he understands what this is about he can see the citizens arguing debating reason their voice being involved it's pretty unique in America to have a thing where the whole town has a night where they get together I think one issue in Vermont is that you have November elections and then you have the town stuff in the march and I think for people that are newer in Vermont using them as that they don't do things whether you could combine the two at the same time and have everybody involved I don't know and I like having the two be separate but just a plug for a part of civic participation as something that's as far as I can tell you the decline of the inclusive town meeting has really affected engagement in shelter when we moved here we had a town meeting where people really came you got to vote on the issues and you got to vote on the valid items and you got to vote on everything yeah there was no Australia about it there was no Australia and made a difference for how many people came to the meeting how many people spoke up I understand COVID's impact versus just the decline but you know in those whole meetings the elders in the town would stand up and they would talk about their history and it just became engaged with what what this town had been and what it could be and what those elders knew we've already talked about that here and here yeah I see well as far as I don't know you appreciate being here but kind of moving back to what gets me involved one of my favorite court cases to look at there's court cases where the ACLD defended Nazis and they're a right to create speech in order to defend the right to create speech properly throughout the U.S you can say that Nazis can be Nazis and it used to say that I can't do anything right exactly yeah and I think that kind of going back to what's far what can we do I think that my parents own laundromats so I spend a lot of time talking to random people who come to my parents laundromats one of my favorite things to do and I love her politics and talk about what their opinions are absolutely everybody especially people who might disagree with me someone who has the time, energy and conviction for it I think that people seeing me and seeing that I'm human is specifically a fear person I think it's so important to humanizing the issue and then talking about why I think that I should be able to marry I should be able to have kids etc I think it's so valuable and I think that as people have the time and privilege we shouldn't be saying that those people can't get involved we should be talking about why they like it involved and why they have those perspectives and trying to figure out get to the bottom of that because what we've been told is that you wake up in the morning to read the news paper and if your parents watch Fox News you watch Fox News and then that's bigger political education because you don't get to schools and that's it so we need to get to the core of it I think that our job has to be to talk to people and to make them human because right now it is on here it is not to get civic education raised up back in the schools and opportunities for getting young people involved even if it's not going to be straight forward civic education involved in government and civic opportunities so yeah a lot of work I was I was very depressed about three years ago I've got prospects for you know I'm feeling better these days but I do think we're going through a kind of talk of civic life in kind of globally it's just how it seems to me like a lot of challenges I mean again I work with young people so it's encouraging because you are representatives of a young review and they are they are engaged in these issues so I feel pretty hopeful about the future but I know that personally it is like a feeling of personal agency and trying to make a difference and trying to implement some kind of changes it's also fun to do reviews I will say at 7.30 and that's what this was scheduled to go to so I think we should call it there and thank you everybody