Community

Many of us have memories of our childhood hometowns where the world outside our neighborhood seemed so incredibly far away. My generation grew up during the transition from a world without cell phones and internet to this age of social media and instant communication, going from a community of our handful of neighbors to a global one.

With so much information and opinions available right at our fingertips it’s no wonder that we have begun to lose touch with those who live nearest to us. The world is such an amazing place and it’s important that we see what is going on, but there needs to be a balance between our focus on those issues and those happening in our own towns.

I believe that through our small acts of service that hometown feeling can be recaptured. It’s incredible how much safer and friendlier the world feels when we build and maintain intimate community bonds. When we unite as a neighborhood we can unite as a town, then as a county, then as a state, and it only grows and grows.

In Congress I will lead the charge in reminding our lawmakers that it is our communities that are the best suited to determine what is best for them. That it is the privilege of each community to determine how best to support its citizens, use their natural resources, protect their public lands, and dictate their own future. Because who knows what our towns need better than the people actually living in them? Congress should then pass legislation that reflects those exact problems and solutions.

By taking an interest in the safety and wellbeing of the citizens of our hometowns we will naturally become a more compassionate society and by having the federal resources to make needed changes locally we can finally start to effectively address inequity. I promise that doing something as simple as mowing a neighbor’s lawn can and will have a global impact.