An open letter to Principal Grace
Thank you for the work you do. I’m running for the District 3 county commissioner seat in the 2024 election, with children as my focus. I’m campaigning on a very specific idea, one that I hope will receive a well-rounded discussion so that everyone in my district will have the opportunity to form an opinion prior to the vote. My platform is that Taos should be self-fed by 2030.
I think that when a county announces it intends to be food independent, money and other resources magically flood in. I believe in spirit energy. As a representative, I’d implement proven policies: tax-free farming, surplus purchase guarantees, and 15-percent budget funding for local food production.
My job during the campaign won’t just be to convince my constituents I’m a good guy, a good listener. I’ll be explaining how each policy I’m promoting raises supply and demand of local food — and how they can supercharge each other when implemented as a group.
I was a seventh-grade teacher in my New York City life. Since I began campaigning, I’ve wished my former students were here, helping me imagine and plan. Many adults report not being able to understand what self-fed means. It’s as if there’s a psychic block. Although I’ve had students who are as jaded as adults, young people in general seem uniquely qualified to plan a brighter future.
Last month, I had a letter in the Taos News, sponsoring a high school essay contest, asking students to write about what steps Taos County would have to take to be self-fed by 2030. I realize, of course, that students are busy with their own writing.
I would like to pitch your students the idea of a Self-fed 2030 Club at school.
It would be valuable to my work to have a think-tank of students with a faculty advisor regularly discussing near-term food independence for Taos. With young people directing the food future discussion, Self-fed 2030 lives in the realm of fun and fantasy (adults likely hear it only as ‘work’). My vision of “self-fed” is that it be fun, fantasy and work.
I don’t have children. It seems like if I had had children, my time would be occupied by their immediate needs, transportation, scheduling details, meals, a safe week. Given the many stresses of our society, I imagine it would be difficult for me, if I were a parent, to discuss 2030 — or even 2024.
However, if a child of mine was a member of a new club at school whose theme was the year 2030, I believe I could, and would, then rather easily discuss the theme as it’s part of my child’s extracurricular activities.
To your students, I’d speak about the club I’m proposing from an admissions office perspective. I read admissions essays for my college for a few years after graduating. As essay readers, we were looking for “starters” who are excited about ideas and who are capable of long-term planning, especially when it’s on a community-wide level.
Self-fed was coined by Julian Laroza, a Taos High School graduate, in his June 2020 letter, “Taos Should Be Self-fed Community.”
I’m writing to you today in a season and an era when heightened security around schools is obviously warranted. Rather than me standing outside and flyering traditionally, would you kindly share this letter with the students, the student council?
The debate team? Adults who I meet who oppose the idea that the county will become self-fed don’t really give me the full logic behind their thinking. I would like to hear a well-articulated argument as to why the county should not make a plan to feed itself, why sustainability isn’t necessary here.
I guess I believe failing to plan is planning to fail.
Almost all of us notice that Taos retains precious few of its young people. Perhaps we’d expect students to be disinterested in Taos’ future, given that it might not include them. But, I think students know there will be pressing food issues wherever they go. I hope they realize that the discussion they might have of Taos’ food future will serve whatever community they call home.
2030 isn’t far off: the distance one places a candle for meditation.