Being a leader is hard. It requires commitment. And selflessness. And doing more work than you probably think.
We deserve leaders who stand, two feet in.
Not people who don’t show up, or who frame their cowardice as a stance. And certainly not people on their heels headed towards the exit or with a foot already out the door.
I am feeling, like I suspect many of you, on edge.
I still carry the trauma of Election Day 2016 and the years that followed. No matter what happens, I won’t fully exhale until — at best — sometime in January.
Even after, regardless, we will need each other. We will need community and care. We will need love and kindness.
It will be easy to slip into pettiness and anger and rage and fear. I hope you can surround yourself with people you love and who love you. I hope we can all find generosity and gratitude.
And I hope we can dig deep to do the hard work ahead.
The work we do on the ground in our neighborhoods and in our community will always matter, even and especially when it’s hard. No matter what. Because it will matter.
The sun always sets. And it always rises. And for some folks the world will always be unfair and hurtful and cruel, and we must do the work to help them. Onward.
I love the outdoors. It’s a place of solitude and calm. It’s worth traveling for.
But it’s also necessary to preserve places here, near home.
That’s why I’m going to flip my ballot over and vote “yes” on the $30 million county conservation bond.
The previous bond helped build out the beautiful Clear Creek and the Iowa River trails, where I’ve biked through rolling hills and to community events; acquire the Pechman Creek Delta, where I’ll be bow hunting for deer this fall; buy the Ciha Fen Preserve, which I discovered through Will Kapp’s lovely local hikes book (and where I was when I learned the result of the 2020 election and let out a deep sigh of relief); and with about 12 other big projects throughout Johnson County.
I want more and know we deserve it. Iowa ranks 47th on percentage of public land, and this is a meaningful step we can take locally to expand this and persevere more natural public spaces for the future.
When you vote, please take the time to flip your ballot over and vote “yes” on the $30 million Johnson County conservation bond.
Early voting started today.
Laura and I sent this to the Little Village, The Gazette and the Press-Citizen:
On June 4, we have the opportunity to elect someone who leads from her values, not her ego. That’s why we are voting for Mandi Remington for Johnson County Supervisor in the Democratic primary, and urge you to join us.
If you’ve watched a Board of Supervisors meeting in the last couple of years, you’ve witnessed our elected leaders be, at times, selfish, petty, rude, dismissive, derisive, and purposefully obtuse as they engage each other and the public, and as they conduct the business of our county.
With more than 30 years of local government service between the two of us, we know political dysfunction when we see it. But you don’t need that much history to see we need to change the dynamic at the dais.
Mandi’s lived experience as a single, working mother brings first-hand, personal understanding of the barriers so many in our community face. Her leadership of the Corridor Community Action Network shows she will work for her community in need. Mandi will lead with hustle, heart, and compassion.
Join us in voting for Mandi Remington on or before June 4.
Erin Jordan and Alejandro Rojas in The Gazette:
Many parents are mad the Iowa City Community School District is closing its elementary school in Hills, but that doesn’t mean they want to send their kids to a lower-ranking district instead.
…
Sen. Dawn Driscoll, R-Williamsburg, and Rep. Heather Hora, R-Washington, met with the Hills City Council last week to talk about the possibility of changing school boundaries to move Hills students to the Lone Tree Community School District instead.
Iowa Republicans, including Driscoll and Hora, continue to defund public education in Iowa, where the past decade has seen state funding fail to keep up with inflation, leading to building and program closures.
The solution Republicans are offering: move your school to a shittier district that doesn’t guarantee it could keep the building open, either.
A footnote on a column by Aletha Cole, The Gazette’s conservative columnist, about trans and non-binary protesters in Johnson County:
*For reasons of conscience, the author respectfully declines to use “they/them” as individual pronouns.
These “reasons of conscience” are unspecified, and appending “respectfully” doesn’t make it so.
Johnson County District Attorney Rachel Zimmermann Smith responded late Wednesday afternoon: “The Defendant got a fair trial and, regardless of the outcome, that is always the ultimate goal.”
Is the goal of any prosecutor a fair trial? And if the ultimate goal is a fair trail, why did Zimmermann Smith offer everyone plea deals?
Plea bargaining accounts for almost 98 percent of federal convictions and 95 percent of state convictions in the United States.
Andrea Adelson writing for ESPN:
The NAACP asked Black student-athletes to reconsider their decisions to attend public colleges and universities in the state of Florida, in response to the University of Florida and other state schools recently eliminating their diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Don’t forget Iowa.
Valerie Hopkins and Andrew E. Kramer in The New York Times:
Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia while enduring arrests, assaults and a near-fatal poisoning, died Friday in a Russian prison, according to Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service. He was 47.
The prison authorities said that Mr. Navalny lost consciousness on Friday after taking a walk in the Arctic penal colony where he was moved late last year. He was last seen on Thursday, when he had appeared in a court hearing via video link, smiling behind the bars of a cell and making jokes.
That’s a suspiciously sudden turn.
Adam Liptak in The New York Times:
Eight years ago, just before the Iowa caucuses, Donald J. Trump crowed about his invulnerability.
“I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” he said. “It’s, like, incredible.”
On Tuesday, at a federal appeals court argument held the week before this year’s caucuses, a lawyer for Mr. Trump said that the Constitution basically states the same thing.
It took a few questions from Judge Florence Y. Pan to pin down the lawyer, D. John Sauer. But in the end he made the jaw-dropping claim that former presidents are absolutely immune from prosecution even for murders they ordered while in office.
“I asked you a yes-or-no question,” Judge Pan said. “Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who was not impeached, would he be subject to criminal prosecution?”
Mr. Sauer said his answer was a “qualified yes,” by which he meant no. He explained that prosecution would only be permitted if the president were first impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate.
Trump’s argument is that the president could order a rival’s murder and the only possibility of accountability is political process of impeachment.
That seems suspiciously close to Navalny’s downfall.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it
There’s a lot of folks in Johnson County who need to be reminded.
