Walk 2024: Day Four
Started the last day of my Walk Across Connecticut in the rain in Ledyard and ended with our traditional end-of-walk celebration at the Mystic Seaport Museum with a beautiful sunny afternoon. This is my favorite week of the year because I get to talk to hundreds of people about what matters in their life.
Here’s a rundown of my fourth and final day on my eighth Walk Across Connecticut:
Stopped in to say hi to the team at the Ledyard Board of Education. One of the biggest topics that people raise with me on my Walk Across Connecticut is making sure our schools have the resources they need.
Later on, I talked to Pete. We spent a while in his front yard talking about the value of compromise and understanding. He’s worried that people don’t believe in the good — only the perfect. As someone who spends a lot of time trying to drive compromise in Washington and believes in making progress, it was a pretty amazing conversation.
“I tell my grandkids,” he said, “find a way to get along with people. Don’t write them off because they’re different from you.”
I was shadowing Chris’s UPS truck on my walk for about a mile and I finally caught up with him to say hello. He loves working for UPS, in large part because the workers have a union. Good pay, benefits. Even the part time workers - like his son - get health care.
During my walk through Mystic, I learned that two local chefs are finalists for the prestigious James Beard award, celebrating the best chefs in America. I met with Reneé Touponce of The Port of Call. Also nominated is David Standridge of The Shipwright's Daughter.
There are so many great small businesses in downtown Mystic. I stopped into a few of them — Lighthouse Bakery, Bank Square Books, and Engine Room.
After four days of walking, I finally reached the shoreline at the Mystic Seaport Museum. It’s always great to see so many friends at our end-of-walk celebration. Thanks to everyone who came out!
That’s a wrap on this year’s Walk Across Connecticut! It was an amazing four days walking from Suffield down to the shoreline, and I’m so grateful to everyone who took time out of their day to share their story with me. Until next year!
I wish you had your NYT article today posted here to reply about because that is what prompts me to seek you out here. I'm in Oregon so I can't reach you directly except by snail mail - which i did do again in mid-July, as I did in July 2022 as well, when I snail-mailed every Democrat in Congress both years about this:
The single most vital crucial, concrete answer as Step One in the project you are addressing about healing America is to implement the very pledge made in the 2020 Democratic Platform but buried on pg. 57 and never campaigned on:
"Democrats believe that the interests and the voices of the American people should determine our elections. Money is not speech, and corporations are not people. Democrats will fight to pass a Constitutional amendment that will go beyond merely overturning Citizens United and related decisions like Buckley v. Valeo by eliminating all private financing from federal elections." (p. 57, July 31, 2020, final Democratic Party Platform, bold added)
This is at the heart of the toxicity killing the American spirit, keeping many from voting out of understandable cynicism about political corruption. (Democrats should be making a goal of moving the electorate from 67% to 75% of eligible voters). Turning 2024 into a referendum/plebiscite where Democrats (preferably as I've repeatedly urged VP Harris - and Pres. Biden before her - to do in her convention acceptance speech) announce: Vote for the Democrat in every legislative race, federal and state and for President Harris and we vow to vote for and ratify the end of quid pro quo corruption by instituting public funding and ending the glitter of private financial gain that lures the corrupt (Trump, Santos et al) and then also beats down those with good intentions who succumb to Big Donors out of desperation to not be primaried or defunded out of office.
I urge you to ask your staff to find and for you to read the snail mail I sent that should have arrived in your D.C. office the week before you adjourned. It much more fully makes the case for turning 2024 into this "radical" (Profiles in Courage-of-Convictions) platform that is not radical at all except that it demands you and all politicians to be brave enough to cut the umbilical cord to not just Big Donors but to the slime of begging constituents and non-constituents alike to "feed" you when politics is supposed to be about government serving constituents, not begging them.
I'd so welcome being able to talk with you about this but at least hoping this message will make its way to your eyes asap in this all-critical week of our party's convention
Sincerely,
Carolyn Taylor, Ph.D., M.F.T. in Eugene, OR
Dear Chris, I just read the really interesting piece about you in the NYT and would like to invite you to read my Substack article, Capitalism is Dead! Long Live Capacitism: https://fdms.substack.com/p/capitalism-is-dead-long-live-capacitism. It references a couple of books I wrote a few years ago that address the very malaise you are exploring. It also references the work of others, such as Gary Snyder and Peter Barnes, that you might be interested in. Feel free also to subscribe to my Substack: I just subscribed to yours and look forward to reading the posts. With best wishes, Fraser Murison Smith