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<p><strong><em>I vow to never accept Dirty Money from corporate PACs.</em></strong><em> </em></p><p><strong><em>I serve the people of Michigan, not corporations.</em></strong></p>

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<p>New philosophy founded on old, tried-and-tested ways of building good government.</p>

<h1>What is Localism?</h1>

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<p>"The only identity boundary that ever really mattered  in human history is between the 99% and the 1%. And the only way to beat the 1% is for the 99% to wake up to this fact of history."</p>

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<p>A bipartisan, science-based plan to bring solutions back to local communities, put power back in people's hands, and rebuild the common good.</p><p><br><strong>Localism is our core belief: </strong>local control, self-reliant communities (growing our own food, powering our own homes, operating our own healthcare systems), and shared decentralized power—not rule from far away.</p>

<h1>Common-Sense Politics for the 21st Century</h1>

Read below for some of our top priorities

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<h4>Localism as our core philosophy</h4>

<h4>Money out of politics</h4>

<h4>Bridging the political divide</h4>

<h4>Putting Michiganders first</h4>

<h4>Protecting us from Big Tech &amp; Data Centers</h4>

<h4>Building up local communities</h4>

<h3>Fighting for Our Community</h3><p>These are some of the <strong>top priorities</strong> our campaign is focused on.</p>

Priorities List

<p><strong>“Our democratic system has been hijacked by an elite ruling class of billionaires.</strong> </p><p><em>True governance means empowering local communities by rebuilding local economies, restoring the self-sustainability of individuals and communities alike, and putting Michiganders before greedy corporate interests.</em>"</p>

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<h2>I'm running to change things because this world isn't working for anyone other than the billionaire class.</h2><span class="image image-framed image-left image-tilt-left" style="width: 45%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/ddae678a-3877-4960-8f2d-056a1c7e89f5/ddae678a-3877-4960-8f2d-056a1c7e89f5.png?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C2460%2C1232&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="45" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><h4>The primary job of any government is to protect its citizens. Ours stopped doing that a long time ago. Money in politics means our representatives sell out to the highest bidder. When billionaires fund your campaign, you govern for billionaires, not the people. Simple as that.</h4><p>I, like many of you, have been personally screwed over by the governmental machine more times than I can count—and not only when I'm at the DMV. It shows up when I'm buying processed, carcinogenic, glyphosate-ridden food at the supermarket that the government not only fails to regulate but subsidizes on purpose. It shows up when our kids can't afford college, when a medical bill wipes out a family's savings, when the water isn't clean and nobody's held accountable. It shows up when Wall Street crashes the economy and gets a bailout from the government while working families lose their homes. It shows up when the Panama Papers expose how the ultra-rich have been systematically hiding their wealth in offshore accounts for decades while the rest of us <strong>shoulder their tax burden</strong>. It shows up when the Epstein files reveal just how deep the parasitic infection between our shadow government and our puppet government actually goes, suggesting that all our institutions are complicit in the systematic abuse and exploitation of the youngest and most vulnerable in our society; <em>the very people they are meant to serve</em>. It shows up when we see the government maintaining a different set of rules for the billionaire Epstein class than for the rest of us. There's nothing conspiratorial about this now. It's all well-documented and out in the open. And we deserve elected officials with the cojones to talk about what's really going on in our world.</p><p><strong>Our government has sold out to Big Money every chance it has gotten. Why? <em>Because of money in politics.</em></strong></p><p>I'm running for office to hold not only our government accountable for its past transgressions against the people—the citizens who elected them to office in the first place—but to ultimately hold the people <em>behind</em> our government accountable: the Epstein class who have been quietly pulling the strings and tilting society toward themselves over the last century, not toward the people. I'm running because the people currently in office have proven they aren't fit to do the job. I'm running because we need a new kind of politician, one who isn't a politician at their core. So let me briefly introduce myself and my politics:</p><span class="image image-framed image-right image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/b3230c37-24c0-4abf-bd86-76a0069d1638/b3230c37-24c0-4abf-bd86-76a0069d1638.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C1024%2C821&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="right" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><p>I'm Mitchell Ryan Distin, PhD—scientist turned reluctant politician. I hold a B.Sc. in neuropsychology from Michigan State University (Go Green!), an M.Sc. in the history and philosophy of science from University College London, and a Ph.D. in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology, and Biodiversity from the Universitat de Valencia in Spain with an international mention from the University of Cambridge in the UK. After finishing at MSU, I moved abroad in 2016 to pursue my graduate studies. I wanted to see the world and get a better understanding of how things work elsewhere (all on a dime, may I add).</p><p>I spent the better part of the last decade traveling around the world, finishing my studies while concurrently immersing myself in different cultures and learning firsthand how other societies function. I've studied and researched at some of the world's top universities and worked alongside leading thinkers in biology, ecology, psychology, history, philosophy, economics, and political science. <strong>But nothing—not a single lecture, seminar, or book—has taught me more about human beings than traveling has.</strong></p><p>Mark Twain, inarguably the greatest American writer who ever lived, put it best: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." He was right. You cannot truly see the good in people until you've lived among them. Until you've shared meals with strangers who then became lifelong friends. Until you've watched communities with practically nothing take better care of each other, and are happier for it, than we do in the richest country on earth.</p><span class="image image-framed image-left image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/c203e9c6-0c24-4a55-b1a0-ce32ecc85279/c203e9c6-0c24-4a55-b1a0-ce32ecc85279.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C7952%2C5304&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><p>That last lesson always stayed with me. Because one of the most striking things I learned along the way is that people in some of the poorest countries in the world are measurably happier than we are here in the USA. <em>Why? </em><strong>Because they still have something we lost long ago: <em>true community</em>.</strong> Humans are complex beings, but we aren't that complex. We evolved to be a communal species, meaning that we require the community to survive.</p><p>Yet the hyperindividualism of America—the loss of our communal social structure—is the explicit reason why we suffer from greater rates of mental illness, experience 57x more mass shootings, and are more lonely, medicated, and indebted than any of our G7 counterparts. We are the richest country in the history of the world, in terms of material wealth. Yet in the areas that actually matter in life—family, community, social connection—we are among<strong> <em>the poorest.</em></strong></p><p>This is one of a billion reasons why I'm running for office. I explicitly moved back home to Michigan to make changes. Plain and simple. We've never had a metascientist (i.e., someone who studies human nature and behavior from anthropology, neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology) in office before, at any level. <strong>That's a major issue.</strong></p><p>One cannot be an effective legislator or leader without first understanding <em>what a human is</em>, <em>why we behave in certain ways in certain contexts, and what conditions allow us not only to survive but to truly thrive. </em>It's common logic.</p><span class="image image-framed image-right image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/b549f144-8f3c-4a5c-80d7-6fe20228b623/b549f144-8f3c-4a5c-80d7-6fe20228b623.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C1440%2C1085&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="right" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><p>This is why I'm not a politician. <strong>I'm a social architect</strong>. The difference is that we need plenty more of the latter and absolutely none of the former. We've been governed by lawyers and businesspeople and lobbyists for too long. It's time for someone who actually understands human beings to make the laws and build the social constructs underpinning our society. This is the lens I'm first bringing to Lansing.</p><p>I'm running because I believe in change. Most people believe that this world is inevitable; that progress (tilted towards elites) is inevitable. It's not. "The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently," wrote the late-great Anthropologist David Graeber. The world we constructed is built on faulty 18th-century philosophy. We need a new system, built on modern advances in science, economics, history, philosophy, and medicine. <strong>We need a new system built to meet the complexities of the 21st century.</strong></p><p>We exist in a new era, one that is reshaping American politics. Over the past year, I've been leading statewide efforts against data centers and Big Tech. At first, I did so for environmental concerns. Now, it's become abundantly clear that the deeper, more nefarious reasons for data centers and the rise of Big Tech are to build a functional surveillance state that imprisons common Americans. <strong>This is no longer a left or a right issue.</strong> It's an everybody issue. It's an issue of the 99%.</p><p>That's why I wrote the book/political pamphlet, <a href="https://a.co/d/06feWXbd" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">"Common Enemy: The Falsity of the Left-Right Divide in America"</a>. I believe we live in a new sociopolitical context in the USA, following everything that has happened throughout my millennial lifetime (e.g., 9/11 and the Patriot Act, the Iraq/Afghanistan war, the 2008 financial crash, Panama Papers, and now the Iran War, Epstein files, Thiel's secret society called Dialog, and emerging Technofascist surveillance state). I'll be distributing free copies throughout Michigan.</p><span class="image image-framed image-left image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/d682a6e4-deb7-4896-9d81-ecfe880a4070/d682a6e4-deb7-4896-9d81-ecfe880a4070.png?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C1410%2C2250&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><p>My politics are simple. I believe the Leviathan of the national and state government simply holds too much power, and they distribute that power unequally into the hands of the 1% rather than the common people. A few thousand rounds of social history have reliably shown that governance only works at a communal level, where everybody knows the leaders they elect personally and vice versa. Science backs this claim. <strong>When we evolved higher-level social structures (i.e., nation-states), we lost the communal foundations of our species. And in turn, <em>we lost what it means to be human.</em></strong></p><p>Even Thomas Jefferson, along with many of our Founding Fathers, believed in local "village politics" (what Jefferson called "Ward Republics", i.e., self-autonomous societies comprised of around 100 people). He asked in an 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval: "<em>What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and power into one body."</em> Jefferson called local self-governance "the article nearest my heart". <strong>He believed the republic could only survive if power was rooted in small communities where every citizen personally participated in government.</strong> If our Founding Fathers were brought back to life today, they'd be incensed by what they see. The Leviathan runs amok.</p><p>The philosophy that best captures my politics is known as <em>Localism (</em>and we're likely the only political candidate in the U.S.A. running on a localist platform)<em>. </em>Localism is a political and economic philosophy that prioritizes local control, community self-reliance, and decentralized power over centralized or global authority. It is a scientifically and philosophically grounded argument about the scale at which human beings actually function: that decisions, governance, economic life, and cultural identity work best when they happen as close to the people affected as possible. G.K. Chesterton famously said that <em>"What we should try to do is make politics as local as possible. Keep the politicians near enough to kick them."</em></p><p>What makes localism distinct from other political philosophies is that it is not primarily an answer to the question <strong><em>what should we</em></strong><em> </em><strong><em>do</em></strong><em> </em>but rather <strong><em>who should decide and at what scale? </em></strong>This is why localism works, because it's genuinely cross-partisan. Socialism answers the questions above with social ownership at the federal level; classical neo-liberalism with "free-markets" and individual rights (in theory, which never works out in practice, hence why we live in a corporatocracy); conservatism with tradition and ordered liberty. Localism answers <strong>with proximity of power</strong>. It is a commitment to building power structures that say that authority should rest at the smallest level competent to exercise it, and the burden of proof should fall on anyone who wants to pull a decision upward and away from the community.</p><p>Another Chesterton quote: “Everybody said the great modern war was between Capitalism and Socialism. We said there was no war; for it was only between Centralization and Centralization.” This is why our campaign team is comprised of the "politically homeless"—disillusioned Dems (like me), disillusioned Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, and Constitutionalists alike. <strong>Our organizing principle holding our team together is our general distrust and disdain for establishment (partisan) politics, because they work for nobody other than the billionaire class.</strong></p><p>In this sense, localism stems from a long lineage within the Anti-Federalist tradition of our Founding Fathers. In fact, the first ten amendments of the Constitution (i.e., the Bill of Rights) were conceived from a localist lens, intending to restrain the power of the federal government from rising up and thwarting individuals' rights. Patrick Henry said it best: "<em>The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government." </em>Or, at least, that's what the Constitution used to represent (as most amendments past the 12th and 13th amendments greatly exacerbated central authority and control of the federal government).</p><span class="image image-framed image-right image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/9cd00471-beb7-4392-98d4-6f136d5fe498/9cd00471-beb7-4392-98d4-6f136d5fe498.jpg?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C359%2C557&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="right" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span><p><strong>This is why Localism is the only viable solution to Big Government, Big Business, and Big Banking.</strong></p><p>Moreover, our Founding Fathers didn't believe in partisan politics. I, too, share in this belief. In his 1796 Farewell Address, George Washington warned that party conflict could harden into vengeance, describing <em>“the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge…[as] itself a frightful despotism,”</em> and cautioning that parties can become <em>“potent&nbsp;engines”</em> for those who would <em>“usurp… the reins of government.”</em></p><p>Years earlier, John Adams posed a similar fear in a 1780 letter: <em>“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties…This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”</em></p><p>There's absolutely nothing American about our current society. As the United States approaches its 250th birthday, those early warnings by our founders ring truer than ever. Partisanship has indeed hardened into a firm tribalism, enabling the potent engines of the billionaire Epstein class to readily usurp the reins of government and redirect our society towards them, not us.</p><p>Thus, my political goals are twofold: (1) to bridge the unnatural, contrived political divide that has hardened into partisan politics, and (2) to take as much of the power away from higher-level forms of government (and thus the billionaire class) and redistribute it back into the hands of local communities (i.e., Localism). Back into the hands we can trust.</p><p><strong>Not left. Not right. Only forward.</strong></p>

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<h4>Mitch on the Capitol Steps at a Data Center Protest in Lansing</h4><p>No such thing as the left vs. right anymore. Only the 99% vs the 1%. </p>

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<p><strong>So much is happening right now.</strong> </p><p>Here's a bit about us in the news (or even our work in the news).</p>

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<p><strong>The village won't build itself. </strong>It takes dedicated people like yourself to build the new world. If you're like us and are done waiting for someone else to fix the system, join us.</p><p>We need canvassers, organizers, and people who just plain give a damn. Sign up for our email newsletter, and we'll be in touch.</p><p></p>

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<h2>How to handle donations on your website</h2><p><strong>Run does not process donations directly on our platform,</strong> as is standard with most political and advocacy sites.</p><p><strong>Campaigns are often required to comply with reporting requirements, donation limits, and other regulations, so using a donation processor that specializes in serving campaigns is generally a good idea.</strong><br></p><p>Sign up with a donation processor and then on your Pages sidebar, click the Link icon on the Donate page and add the link to your donation page. Some common options for donation processing include:</p><ul><li><p><a href="https://secure.actblue.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>ActBlue</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.campaigndeputy.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>Campaign Deputy</strong></a><strong><br></strong></p></li><li><p><a href="https://goodchange.app/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>GoodChange</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://numero.ai/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>Numero</strong></a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.ngpvan.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"><strong>NGP VAN</strong></a></p></li></ul>

<p>Scientist by trade turned politician by necessity.</p>

<h1>Meet Mitch</h1>

<h2>Our government is owned by the billionaire class</h2><p><strong>It doesn't matter if you're left or right—we share the same common enemy.</strong> Since at least the Roman Empire, the rich and powerful have used the same playbook: divide working people against each other, distract us with cheap tricks, and quietly strip the majority of its innate power and good-hearted people of their inalienable rights and freedoms.</p><p>Today, that playbook is being upgraded. From the 2008 financial crisis to the Epstein files, the pattern is undeniable—and now the elites have new tools: programmable digital currencies that can freeze your money, mass surveillance that tracks your every move, and AI being used to concentrate wealth and control even further.</p><p>We must fight back. It's no longer left vs. right. <strong>It's the 99% vs. the 1%.</strong></p>

<h2>Community-First Politics for the 21st Century</h2><p><strong>Humans are a communal species</strong>. Our brains and bodies evolved to live within the friendly confines of the village. 90% of the issues we face today—from climate change to mass shootings to mental illness—all stem from the same root cause: <strong>the collapse of the community</strong>. We don't need to update the system. We need to throw the whole thing out and rebuild anew.</p><p>Most politicians treat symptoms. <strong>As a scientist, I'm trained to find root causes.</strong></p><p>We've built a society that disregards our deeper human needs for social and spiritual connection. When those needs go unmet, disease and disorder are predictable outcomes. </p><p>I'm Dr. Mitchell Ryan Distin. I'm not running to keep the machine going. <strong>I'm here to dismantle it entirely and build something better, together.</strong></p><p></p>

<h2>Localism as our core philosophy</h2><p>Localism is a political and economic philosophy that prioritizes local control, community self-reliance, and decentralized power over centralized or global authority.</p><p><span style="color: var(--color-text-accent-primary); text-decoration-color: var(--color-text-accent-primary);"><strong>Localism is the only viable solution to Big Government, Big Business, and Big Banking.</strong></span></p><h5>What Localism looks like in practice:</h5><p><strong>Food</strong><br>Buy, grow, and eat locally. Farmers markets. Community gardens. School farm-to-table.</p><p><strong>Energy</strong><br>Community solar. Locally owned utilities. Home energy independence.</p><p><strong>Economy</strong><br>Shop locally. Community banks/insurance programs. Support small business and local trades.</p><p><strong>Governance</strong><br>Local control over zoning and land use. Participatory budgeting. Local say over resource decisions.</p><p><strong>Community</strong><br>Local schools with local input. Mutual aid—tool libraries, skill-sharing, childcare co-ops.</p>

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<h2>Localism 101</h2><p>Most of our founding fathers were localists. The key idea behind localism is that </p><p></p><span class="image image-framed image-left image-tilt-left" style="width: 40%;"><span class="image-inner-wrapper"><img src="https://run.imgix.net/a2c71aca-a541-452a-b49e-31bdc0928f93/871880db-84a5-4d1d-af3e-7b7f30826009/871880db-84a5-4d1d-af3e-7b7f30826009.png?ixlib=js-3.8.0&amp;bri=0&amp;con=0&amp;sat=0&amp;high=0&amp;shad=0&amp;usm=0&amp;rect=0%2C0%2C1080%2C753&amp;w=1500" alt="" caption="" align="left" alignwidth="40" tiltdirection="left" variant="framed"></span><span class="caption" style="display: none;"></span></span>

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<p><strong>It's just common sense. </strong>True governance means <strong>Localism:</strong> empowering local communities by rebuilding local economies, restoring the self-sustainability of individuals and communities alike, and putting Michiganders before greedy corporate interests.</p><p></p><p>All of our policies will thus be viewed through a localist lens. </p>

<h2>Localism as our core philosophy</h2>

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Write a short blurb about an issue your campaign is highlighting. Try to keep the text a similar size between the various issue blurbs.

<p><strong>All policy considerations should be viewed through a localist lens.</strong> Localism means power belongs closest to the people it affects—not distant regulators in Lansing or Washington. It means growing our own food, powering our own homes, banking and shopping locally, and running healthcare as community infrastructure; a system truly by the people, for the people. It means residents—not distant bureaucrats or lobbyists—deciding on zoning, land use, and public dollars.</p><p>Localism isn't left or right. It's bipartisan, because self-reliance and community control are values we all share. A localist lens to policy is how we build a common good that actually feels like ours.</p>

<p>A recent op-ed in the Times Herald titled “We didn't stop the assembly line — why stop data centers?” deserves a response grounded in the science and evidence. I’ve been working on as a research scientist and director of a nonprofit that is leading statewide efforts against the construction of data centers in Michigan. Let's go claim by claim.</p>

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<h4>No, data centers are not assembly lines</h4>

<p><strong>Humans should be free to live how they want.</strong> Decades of American consumer culture have utterly dismantled the social pillar of the village that humans evolved within. Thriving individuals emerge from thriving communities, and thriving communities require intentional design on the legislator’s part. Ban the prioritization of car infrastructure over walkable, human-scaled community design. Fund community land trusts to keep neighborhoods in the hands of residents. Make it easier for communities to open their own community-run banks, utilities, and businesses. Establish cooperatively governed community centers, gardens, and green spaces in every district. Prioritize nature-based early childhood environments.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Tribe</em> by Sebastian Junger; <em>A Paradise Built</em> in Hell by Rebecca Solnit;<em> The World Until Yesterday</em> by Jared Diamond</p>

<h2>Restoring the Community</h2>

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<h4>Event title here</h4>

<p><strong>Social media algorithms specially target our youth.</strong> We have to end the predatory targeting of minors by technology platforms, which have reliably demonstrated that they cannot be trusted through their legal accountability history. Our Children's mental health and development must not be sacrificed for ad revenue.</p><p><strong>Documentary Recommendations:</strong> The Social Dilemma (2020)</p>

<h2>Protecting children from Big Tech</h2>

<p><strong>The greatest threat to personal liberty in the 21st century is the emerging technofascist state run by a few individuals.</strong> Across the world, the infrastructure of total control is being built in plain sight. Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) that can freeze your money or restrict what you buy. Digital IDs that make your ability to work, travel, and participate in society contingent on government approval. AI surveillance systems that track your everything. Social credit systems that reward compliance and punish dissent. Unfortunately, these are now real concerns. Michigan will not be a testing ground for these tools of control.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Technofeudalism </em>by Yanis Varoufakis</p>

<h2>Protecting citizens from technofascism and the emerging surveillance state</h2>

<p><strong>Big Banking doesn't work for the people. </strong>Big banks and national insurers answer to shareholders, not to us. Credit unions and local insurance co-ops answer to the people who use them. Keeping our money local means it stays here, funding local farms, local homes, and local businesses instead of flowing out to Wall Street.</p>

<h2>Community Banking/Insurance</h2>

<p><strong>Write a little something about your issue here.</strong> You can only put a short blurb here, but you can publish out a full issue page, which the View More button will link to by default. If you want to link the View More button somewhere else, or remove it altogether, you can do so via the Post Publishing Setting in the sidebar.</p>

<h2>Ban Surveillance Tech (Like Flock and other ALPRs)</h2>

<p><strong>A scientifically literate population is the requisite of an informed electorate.</strong> Yet the scientific community itself is under siege from Big Publishing, who have some of the largest profit margins of any industry because they collect intellectual property for free—work that was largely funded by taxpayers—and sell it back to the public at cost. They don't pay editors, reviewers, or authors for their work, then have the audacity to claim the knowledge as their own, lock it behind a paywall, and charge the public for it. The public is left paying twice—once for the tax dollars that go to publicly funded research, and again to access the knowledge. This double-dipping needs to be called out and stopped. I know this system firsthand. It is legalized extortion, and it benefits nobody except the publishers. Moreover, our 350-year-old journal system made sense when horses and buggies were the primary mode of transportation and communication. Today, however, we can make a significantly improved scientific system that is fully open to the public. We will push for mandatory open-access publishing for all federally funded research, public preprint infrastructure so scientists can share findings immediately, reformed peer review systems that are transparent, credited, and compensated, and antitrust scrutiny of the handful of publishing conglomerates that have cornered academic knowledge. We can have a faster, more honest, more accessible scientific ecosystem at a fraction of the current cost. The only people who lose are the ones who never deserved the profit in the first place.</p>

<h2>A New, Open Science</h2>

<p><strong>Humans are a communal species.</strong> We evolved to raise children together—a practice known as alloparenting, where the whole village shared responsibility for the young. For most of human history, no parent(s) raised a child alone. Today, we expect many people to. This shift has resulted in a profound crisis that often goes unacknowledged. Childhood anxiety, developmental delays, unnecessary trauma, and parental burnout are predictable outcomes of a society that has lost its "evolved nest". We must restore the village. That means universal, high-quality early childhood education &amp; childcare built around local communities. That means prioritizing nature-based early childhood environments. The science is clear that the earliest years are the most consequential. Investing in children is one of the smartest things a society can do.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>The Evolved Nest</em> by Darcia Narvaez and Gay Bradshaw</p>

<h2>Restoring our Evolved Nest: communal childhood development</h2>

<p><strong>There's only one policy that follows with the burgeoning scientific literature on data centers, and the public opposition to them: NO FRIGGEN' DATA CENTERS .</strong> The science is too new, but the bits and bobs we do have are massively concerning. And a recent poll found that 71% of Americans are against data centers going into their backyard. We live in a representative democracy, which means our policy decisions must align with scientific and public opinion. And that opinion says quite clearly that data centers are not necessary infrastructure. We don't need 'em, and we don't want 'em.  </p>

<h2>Ban Data Centers</h2>

<p><strong>If you want to link an external news source,</strong> open up the accordion for this item on the sidebar and switch the Post Publishing Setting to “Custom Link”.</p>

<h4>Tensions rise during Stronach Township data center discussion</h4>

<p><strong>Good social systems are the backbone of any good society. </strong>Even Adam Smith—the father of free-market economics—believed that education and public infrastructure should be public goods. But here's what both parties get wrong. These systems should be rooted in local communities, not managed from Lansing or Washington. Every family deserves universal paid family leave and affordable childcare. Medicare for All would end the cruelty of tying your health to your employer. Every child deserves a world-class public education. And our veterans, who gave everything, must never be left waiting for the care they earned, which means dramatically expanding and improving access to VA healthcare so that those who served are never left behind. These are universal human needs, and they are best met close to home, by the communities that know their people best.</p>

<h2>Universal social systems (at the communal level)</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Bee Well Mead &amp; Cider (Bellaire)</h4>

Antrim - Bee Well Mead & Cider

<p><strong>Modern medicine is extraordinary at keeping people alive. It is much less good at keeping people well.</strong> The Rockefeller model of medicine we inherited in the early 20th century shifted our focus toward treating symptoms through a pharmaceutical-centered approach (or "oil-based medicine"), rather than addressing the root causes of our diseases. We started treating the human body like a machine with broken parts. You have a symptom, you get a pill. You have a tumor, you cut it out. This approach has produced genuine miracles, but it has also produced a healthcare system that is among the most expensive in the world and leaves tens of millions of people chronically sick, chronically medicated, and no closer to understanding why they got sick in the first place. We are treating outputs. We need to be treating inputs. Consider cancer research: we pour billions of public dollars into targeting specific diseases one at a time, when the science is telling us that most non-infectious diseases—e.g., cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, heart disease—are ultimately diseases of aging, sharing the same upstream causes of cellular damage, chronic inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction. Redirecting even a fraction of that funding toward slowing the aging process itself could prevent all of them simultaneously. This is moving away from a mechanistic, Rockefeller-based model of medicine and towards a systems approach rooted in better philosophy. This new approach is called the biopsychosociospiritual model of medicine, and it recognizes what every good clinician already knows: that  physical health is inseparable from social, psychological, and even spiritual contexts. Chronic loneliness damages the body as profoundly as smoking. Trauma rewires the nervous system in ways that surface decades later as autoimmune disease. People without community, purpose, or spiritual grounding get sick more, recover more slowly, and die younger. This is the new model of medicine. It's not an alternative, "hippy" model built on shoddy evidence. It is built on the latest knowledge stemming from the frontiers of the sciences today. In short, we don't need more pills. We need a better philosophy, and the courage to build a new system based on what we currently know about humans.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Civilized to Death</em> by Christopher Paul Ryan</p>

<h2>A New Medicine (The Biopsychosociospiritual Model of Medicine)</h2>

<p><strong>We deserve free and fair elections.</strong> We deserve full transparency for all political donations. Ban dark money and require mandatory disclosure for all campaign donors. End gerrymandering. Prohibit the revolving door between Congress and lobbying. Limit total campaign spending. Ban lobbying altogether because it gives special interests an inherently unfair advantage over ordinary citizens.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Dark Money</em> by Jane Mayer</p>

<h2>Democracy reform & anti-corruption</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Providence Farms (Central Lake)</h4>

Antrim - Providence Farms (Central Lake)

<p><strong>Accomplishing energy and food independence is the first step to taking back power from the corrupt billionaire class.</strong> When we grow our own food and power our own homes, we're no longer participating in the world that doesn't work for us, but only works for billionaires. We're not stuck waiting on distant supply chains or price spikes we can't control. In practice, this means disbanding utility monopolies in favor of community solar programs, local utilities, local farms and co-ops—keeping both the power and the profits here, close to home.</p>

<h2>Energy/Food Independence of Communities</h2>

<p><strong>Any person or business that sits between a producer and a consumer without adding real value is a parasite.</strong> We have many parasites in our current society. Insurance companies that collect premiums and deny claims. Pharmaceutical middlemen who mark up drugs they didn't develop. Private equity firms that buy hospitals, gut staff, and bill patients more than necessary. Landlords who own dozens of properties they didn't build. Ticket scalpers. Predatory lenders. The list goes on and on. These aren't job creators. They are toll collectors. A community-first economy rewards the people who actually make things, grow things, teach things, build things, and heal things. Our goal is to systematically identify and eliminate middlemen wherever they sit between working people and the services they need.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendation:</strong> <em>Bullshit Jobs</em> by David Graeber</p>

<h2>Cut Out The Middleman</h2>

<h4>Antrim - Harbor Days (Elk Rapids)</h4>

Antrim - Harbor Days (Elk Rapids)

<p><strong>Michigan land, businesses, and homes belong to Michiganders</strong>—<strong>not greedy outside interests. </strong>Non-residents should not be permitted to own or purchase land, real estate, or businesses in Michigan. Today, over 6% of the Upper Peninsula is owned by foreign entities poised to extract our natural resources. Wall Street must be banned from buying single-family homes. Adversarial foreign nations must be barred from purchasing American farmland. Limit residential ownership to two homes per Michigan family.</p>

<p><strong>Michigan land, businesses, and homes belong to Michiganders</strong><span style="color: var(--color-text-accent-primary); text-decoration-color: var(--color-text-accent-primary);">—</span><strong>not greedy outside interests. </strong>Non-residents should not be permitted to own or purchase land, real estate, or businesses in Michigan. Today, over 6% of the Upper Peninsula is owned by foreign entities poised to extract our natural resources. Wall Street must be banned from buying single-family homes. Adversarial foreign nations must be barred from purchasing American farmland. Limit residential ownership to two homes per Michigan family.</p>

<h2>Putting Michiganders First</h2>

<p>A <em>Washington Post</em> article, “How Data Centers Are Shifting the Political Landscape,” highlighted how the data center phenomenon is exposing that Americans share far more in common than they typically realize, the same pattern observed in Kalkaska. Maybe, just maybe, we’re not so different after all.</p>

<h4>Bridging the Political Divide: The science of working together, and how we’re doing it in northern Michigan</h4>

<p><strong>The Michigan Public Service Commission steals local control and is thus inherently anti-localist.</strong> As a governor-appointed board, this is why the MPSC likely votes in the interest of the Governor (and their corporate backers). Thus, we believe in abolishing the MPSC, because they have proven to be a fundamentally corrupt entity that does not function in Michiganders' best interests.</p>

<h2>Abolish the MPSC</h2>

<h4>Mutual Aid Picnic</h4>

<p>Bring your family, friends, or co-workers and hang out with your neighbors practicing togetherness, collective action, and solidarity with millions of people across the United States participating in the May Day General Strike.</p><p>WHAT TO BRING</p><p>- Something to share (not required, no monetary exchange)</p><p>- Something to sit on (beach/camping chair, blanket)</p><p>- Handheld signs are permitted, but nothing IN the ground</p><p>DO NOT BRING</p><p>- amplified audio of any kind, no speakers, mics, megaphones etc...</p><p>- tables</p><p>- alcohol</p><p>- weapons of any kind</p>

Mutual Aid Picnic

<p><strong>Michigan's natural beauty is why we all live here.</strong> Our rivers, forests, wetlands, and Great Lakes are not merely resources for the rich to exploit to bolster their moneybags. They are living systems deserving legal protection in their own right. We will enshrine the Rights of Nature into Michigan law, giving ecosystems legal standing to exist and regenerate alongside humans. Hold corporate polluters criminally liable for environmental destruction. Establish a Great Lakes Protection Fund and honor tribal treaty rights as a cornerstone of environmental stewardship.</p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Finding the Mother Tree</em> by Suzanne Simard; <em>The Secret Wisdom of Nature</em> by Peter Wohlleben</p>

<h2>Enshrining Nature's Rights</h2>

<p><strong>Money in politics is the foremost issue underpinning our democratic system. </strong>The root cause of government acting against the public interest is that corporations and billionaires have more influence than citizens. Together, we must overturn Citizens United and ban corporate PACs.</p>

<h2>Money out of politics</h2>

<p><strong>"A well-informed electorate is a prerequisite to democracy," wrote Thomas Jefferson.</strong> Learning shouldn't stop at graduation—or ever, for that matter. Every person, at every age, deserves equal access to knowledge and education. That means fully funded public schools, free community college, universal public library access, and open educational resources that don't cost students hundreds of dollars per textbook. That means free courses on every topic known to humans, from trade skills such as woodworking to political theory. Knowledge hoarded behind paywalls and tuition bills is the basis of our unequal class system. In a healthy democracy, information flows freely and readily to all those who seek it. </p>

<h2>Knowledge Should Be Free</h2>

<p><strong>We live in a deeply unequal society</strong><span style="color: var(--color-text-accent-primary); text-decoration-color: var(--color-text-accent-primary);">, </span><strong>matching pre-Revolutionary France levels of social inequality.</strong> Billionaires and corporations must pay their fair share. Establish a minimum tax on billionaires and close the loopholes exposed in recent years (i.e., the Panama Papers, Epstein files). Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices directly. Extend Social Security taxes to incomes above $400,000 to fully fund the program. Enact strong data privacy laws that protect Americans from Big Tech, as most of Europe already has.</p>

<h2>Economic fairness & citizen protections</h2>

<p><strong>Every economist worth their salt knows that the neoclassical model is broken.</strong> It was built on the physics of Newton's era, yet humans don't fit into the neat categorical boxes of physical phenomena like the laws of physics (e.g., rational actor theory). We are complex beings. We need a new economic model that's actually grounded in human behavior and nature—what is called behavioral economics or "evonomics". This is, fundamentally, a new economics built on better science. The <a href="https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/econ-2022-0070/html?srsltid=AfmBOoqK_LiRe5JgAUtWFQNqzmlJksPnhQs_xyfYFncatzIlsrEDeisw">emerging multilevel paradigm</a> treats economies the way biology treats ecosystems—as adaptive, evolving systems shaped by culture, environment, cooperation, and competition all at once. Rather than assuming humans are isolated utility-maximizers, it starts from what we actually know about human nature, that we are deeply social beings who operate at multiple levels of organization within diverse groups and institutions. This is where the science of economics is heading. Thus, I will push to fund and elevate heterodox economic research, bring evolutionary and behavioral economics into how we design policy, and stop letting an outdated 19th-century model serve as the intellectual cover for decisions that hurt working people. Our economic assumptions shape everything—healthcare, housing, wages, climate. We cannot afford to keep getting the assumptions wrong. </p><p><strong>Book Recommendations:</strong> <em>Sacred Economics</em> by Charles Eisenstein; <em>Debunking Economics</em> by Steve Keen; <em>The Origin of Wealth</em> by Eric Beinhocker.</p>

<h2>A New Economics Rooted in Nature</h2>

Social Event

Dr. Mitchell Ryan Distin—biologist running for State Representative in Michigan's 104th District. A scientist fighting for clean water, affordable healthcare, and stronger communities across northern Michigan.

Mitch for Michigan

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