introduction

Democracy is a conversation. As a restaurant owner, I have had the privilege of having thousands of conversations over the last ten years. I have had long talks with customers from many political backgrounds, sometimes arguing over the bar late into the night. 

What has surprised me is how often everything comes down to the same handful of issues. It does not matter whether the person is a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent. When we talk about life, the same problems keep coming up: housing, childcare, healthcare, schools, aging, and basic community stability. 

This book is a living document. I plan to update and expand it as we learn new information and gain new insight. 

In the following pages, I have done my best to diagnose the big issues in our state while also offering some tangible solutions. Many ideas in this book have a long history and people in other times and places have used different names for some of the ideas I’ve proposed. I am not claiming to invent all of these ideas. What I am doing is translating hundreds of hours of discussions into a simple framework that people would understand. Now, we can finally see we’re all talking about the same future. A future worth fighting for.