{"id":1759,"date":"2020-11-21T18:52:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-22T02:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1759"},"modified":"2020-11-21T18:52:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-22T02:52:21","slug":"two-weeks-in-the-life-november-21-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalmanticore.com\/?p=1759","title":{"rendered":"Two Weeks in the Life: November 21, 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sometimes I feel like I have missed out on important information. Lately I’ve been mulling over how to be an involved citizen. It’s clear that letting democracy run on auto-pilot was not a good strategy, but what can an ordinary person do to nudge the steering wheel? I’m 34 years old and just now starting to figure out how this works. Meanwhile, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is three years younger<\/a> than me and she’s serving in the House of Representatives. I wouldn’t even know how to run for city council. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I have learned recently is that the city and county have committees that people can just … join? Or at least anyone can tune into a public meeting. Apparently if you hang around enough you could potentially get appointed to the committee. At least, that’s my sense of it. A lot of committees say that a county supervisor appoints the members. But how would you get on their radar? I still have many questions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my questions: why is this so hard to understand? Another: why does this feel like secret knowledge? I took a class on “government” my senior year in high school, but we focused on the three branches of federal government and their checks and balances. We had a creepy male teacher who seemed to have a thing for the Asian girls. He taught us that “federalism is like a marble cake” and when I took the AP government test that year, I had no idea how to respond to a question about federalism and I drew a cake instead. (Note: I still eked out a passing score on the exam).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As part of my lifelong pursuit to make the things I encounter easier to understand, here are some things you can do to get involved or at least keep an eye on your government people:<\/p>\n\n\n\n