Vote hope, not fear

The cities (whether they call themselves so or not) of Massachusetts have local elections today, including my hometown of Worcester.
I've already posted once in this election season about Worcester, as my district race had a preliminary contest. I'll be going in later today to vote for Matt Wally, with a fervent hope that he steps up to learn more about education funding, and backs way off the policing focus, should he win.

In the at large race, I'll tell you that Mayor Petty has walked the talk on school funding. What WPS most needs, when it comes to budgets, is a mayor who goes to Boston and actively advocates for the change to the foundation budget that has Worcester functioning at something like 4/5ths of the budget it should have. He gets it, he's internalized it, and he's served us well.
On other aspects of other education policy, we don't always agree (check four years of roll calls if you don't believe me), but he came into the mayor's chair knowing that he needed to learn the school committee side. And he doesn't pretend to know what he doesn't, which is one of the biggest drawbacks of many a politician (that's also my other main test of who NOT to vote for).

Overall, though, here's what I'll recommend across the board:
Don't give votes to people who try to make you afraid.

We again this election have had a wide array of people running for office whose main pitch to voters has been fear. The District 5 race has focused largely on policing and taxation, and neither in any way that is positive or moving forward or forming relationships or trying to be constructive. We've seen in on Council over and over in the past two years: we should fear immigrants, or poor people, or anyone who isn't like us. Frankly, I'm not going to vote for very many at large candidates--maybe two? beyond Petty--because so many councilors have, at one time or another, made it clear that they view fellow denizens of Worcester as "those people."

And that's particularly dangerous when it comes to schools.

And it's been particularly pervasive when it comes to schools. I won't walk you back through two years ago--it's already been said, and better, by others--but the mystery of the suddenly safe schools post-election doesn't take a Sherlock Holmes to place.
It isn't just school safety (though we saw another round of "the safety budget must go up" as well as "but the policing is working!"). This past two years saw a concerted effort to make parents afraid of wireless internet in their buildings, in defiance of all science. The campaign has seen an effort to make PCBs, after all the testing has come back below EPA levels, an issue again. It also has seen yet another "but the Common Core" push, after two rounds of standards revision post-Common Core.

I'll tell you bluntly that refusing to vote based on fear won't give you many options. But you should never be ashamed of a bullet vote.

Vote hope, not fear.