a quick new idea daily from the world's greatest tedex tots I'm your host atosa Leoni and this is tedex shorts Kyle hack believes in being more politically active in our own backyard his podcasts Bridge the city and innovators on t focus on local Civic engagement and leadership in today's episode Kyle makes a compelling case that by voting and spending local we will feel more connected and can make real change I think local activism is a gateway to National activism you get involved locally you learn the skill set in the mindset to make change and then
you can scale that up myself when I first tried to make a difference I tried to jump in right away at the national level and I would write emails and I would join groups and what I found is a lot of resistance a lot of no and I felt really disempowered and what I think the local model does is it flips that script it allows you to feel empowered and then scale up and so I wanted to test this Theory does local actually matter and so me and a group of friends built a local media
company called Bridge the city and theide idea was to connect people resources and ideas that inspired people to action locally and over the course of three years we've produced nearly a 100 episodes we've interviewed close to 200 guests and I can report that at least in my mind the theory holds true local you can have a great impact and you can make a difference in your community and the Crux of my talk today is not to talk about the podcast but to talk about the framework that if you're feeling disempowered or you're feeling uninspired about
America about national news how you can use this framework in your own Community to make a difference and this framework is three simple steps the first step is to vote local so maybe this is true for you but when I was growing up whether it was a mix of privilege or ignorance or unique cocktail of both I thought the only election that mattered was the presidential election and it was simple you walked into The Ballot Box you voted for the president you hand your ballot in you left you saluted the flag you did your civic
duty and you're good to go for four years that's it and as I got a lot older and a little wiser I realized that there's so much more to it than that and that elections don't just happen every four years they happen every single year sometimes multiple times per year and these elections matter they're your older person your school board your mayor even in some localities they vote for their coroner you're literally voting over your dead body and these aren't low stakes elections as well because take the Milwaukee school board for example they control a
budget of over1 billion that's more than the entire budget of the city of Milwaukee but how many people do you think vote in this election you might think it's 60% like a national presidential election in local elections sometimes only 10 % of Voters are voting so if you really want to make an impact yes vote nationally but unless you're in a handful of Swing States and you want to compete with a million other voters if you vote locally that vote can sometimes have a larger impact the second part of this framework is to spend locally
now I know I just said that we vote every single year but now I'm about to contradict myself we actually vote every single day and what I mean by that is whenever we spend our money we're voting with our dollars my challenge to you is if you have the extra income to spend $0 to $45 a month on that try to find that for your local community as well and spend locally and spend locally is not just about money it's about your talent and your time a lot of these organizations they run on volunteers and
in kind services so if you don't have the funds you have your time and your talent that you can give to these organizations to really make an impact in your local and there's two things you'll realize the first is that these organizations go above and beyond to stretch your dollar to maximize impact and the second thing is you'll see money being injected right back into your community and again you'll see the change happen and that inspires you and allows you to take on new challenges that come your way the final part of this framework is
to connect local and this is very topical as many of us are facing social isolation right now so my words of wisdom today is you don't need to feel alone there is someone in your community or in your neighborhood that cares about the same issues that you do and if you can connect with them you can make a difference now there's a great proverb that says if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far you go together the tedex talk you just listened to was recorded in Milwaukee Wisconsin all
tedex events are independently organized by volunteers who believe in Ted's mission of ideas worth spreading special thanks to the organizing team at tedex marquetteu want to listen to more tedex talks explore the entire archive on the tedex YouTube Channel I'm matosa Leone thanks for listening and see you tomorrow
