A Seat At The Table

How do we fully occupy our own seat at the table? How can we help ensure all people in this country are invited to the table and made welcome as guests of honor? How do we sit down together to create visions of a better future that we can begin collaboratively actualizing now?

Traditional tools for exercising agency...

Align ourselves with organizations doing excellent work. Become volunteers, donors, employees, and leaders.

• Reverend Rathke started a giving collective.
• My brother, Mike, turned me onto two other projects in the same vein.

Use our voices in letters, emails, calls, protests, petitions, and locally within our communities.

• I am writing to Wyoming elected officials because why not?
• Evan and I are exploring the possibility of putting our wilderness medicine skills to use at Standing Rock.

Act locally in alliance with vulnerable populations, forging connections across difference, and engaging in civil civic discourse.

• My friend, Nate, became the faculty mentor for the anti-bullying club at Lander Valley High School. 
• Another friend, Anna, talked about the importance of breaking bread with strangers and immigrant contributions to our culture in her cooking class for third graders.
• Yet another friend, Julia Stuble, ran for state political office and got 43% of the vote despite being young, relatively unknown before the election, liberal and a woman in Wyoming. 

Lead by example and look to those who have gone before us for guidance.

• I am seeking out mentors among those who have dedicated their lives (by necessity or out of principle) to values I share.
• At our best, we enrich the world in ways that are authentic and unique to us. I am searching for personally sustainable ways to contribute that align with my strengths and passions.

New approaches to resistance and advocacy...

Create platforms that positively reshape our notions of citizenship and our country's collective self.

• I would like to figure out how to fund and design a website called "We The People" that facilitates a creative and curious exploration of identity in America. It would encourage people to reach out to each other and conduct interviews in their communities that expose the sacred strength of our vulnerabilities. The website would serve as a forum for sharing portraits (in words, photos and videos) of our individual genius as well as our common humanity.

Utilize our imaginations, share innovative ideas, work together to put those ideas into action, and see what gains traction.

• Paradigm shifts offer opportunity in that unprecedented situations push us to explore and develop unprecedented responses. Right now, there is a hefty mass of people waiting to throw their full weight behind any strategy that yields positive results.

Bottom Line?

The prognosis is dire. It is not enough to believe we are exceptional. We must show ourselves to be exceptional.