Pierre’s Values
Truth
I believe that our community requires serious and honest leadership, not pageantry. We do not need the fanfares, parades, parties, and other trappings of power. We need leaders who can channel the power of our communities into change.
I believe it is the duty of a leader to be honest with those they stand with. To lead with lies is not leadership, it is a form of con-artistry, fleecing people for personal ambition, rather than convincing them to honestly stand with you.
I believe that leaders must act with conscience. An elected official must be able to live with the decisions they make on behalf of those they represent. They must not allow themselves to be bullied, bribed, or intimidated. To avoid this, we must place safeguards in place against that kind of untoward influence.
I believe that public servants must be held to a high ethical standard. A public servant, be they elected or not, receives the public trust. Those who hold that obligation must act in ways that are not just morally defensible, but clearly ethical and transparent. We must be able, as a community, to trust those we rely on in the public sector. We must regulate against corruption, and against regulators being able to profit from their own regulations.
I believe our government must adjust to the information age. Disinformation runs rampant in our world today, conspiracy theories are common, and people are misinformed through no fault of their own. When a nation cannot agree upon what is true, then it has lost its path. Yet, government cannot dictate truth. We must therefore invest in education, especially in media literacy.
I believe we must immediately prepare for the impacts of climate change. Our climate is changing, thanks to our reliance upon greenhouse gas emissions as an industrial byproduct. While efforts to reduce emissions must continue, we will face increasing climate challenges over the coming century, no matter how well we decarbonize our economy. Federal, state, and local governments can all adopt policies and strategies to protect our people from the on-the-ground impacts of climate change. The time for action is now.
Pragmatism
I believe in a pragmatic approach to problem-solving. As much as I might wish to bring about a utopia tomorrow, public policy is the exercise of choosing the problems we face as a society, not the exercise of solving them. Every solution creates a new problem, and we must choose which evil is worse.
I believe in maintaining public safety by professionals, either in in armed or unarmed response. Many public safety issues require a strong armed police response. For those issues, I would prefer our police force be rested and well trained. Additionally, many public safety issues require a more subtle response, long term relationship-building, and community relations. I believe these tasks can be given to unarmed public safety responders, and that will help ensure armed police responders are being tasked appropriately to their skills.
I believe in repairing existing infrastructure. Too much infrastructure in the United States, and in Ithaca and Tompkins County specifically, has been left with deferred maintenance, We need to take our engineers seriously when they give us timelines for when things need to be repaired. There is an optimal time for repairs, and they become more expensive, and often more dangerous with time.
Additionally, I believe in expanding our infrastructure. People want to live in our communities, and I believe we need to create a structure to welcome them. For this reason, I support sewer expansion, intermunicipal coordinated development plans, and other efforts to expand the capacity of our infrastructure.
I believe in government support for affordable housing, and expanding housing options across Tompkins County. These cannot be solely in our already developed areas, and will need government support to avoid the creation of suburban sprawl.
I believe in intermunicipal cooperation, and the need for our communities to stand together to achieve our mutual goals. For too long, our communities have been divided by artificial lines, drawn in the 1800s. Ithaca is a larger community than its legal boundaries, and we need to work together as a whole community, not just within our chunks of it.
Liberty
I believe that every person ought to be able to live, as an American, free from fear, and free from want. Our society has the wealth to achieve this, and we can provide each other the support to allow each of us to choose our best life.
I believe that freedom cannot be restrained by prejudice. Love is love, and we must defend the rights of our queer brothers, sisters, and others.
I believe that women have equal rights, as promised in the 28th Amendment. We must continue to work hard to realize the dreams of a community beyond gender-based discrimination.
I believe that America remains a nation of immigrants. Immigration is not a problem, it is what has built the American dream. Immigrants make our community stronger, and the rights of our immigrant community, documented and undocumented, must be protected.
I believe our faith must be strictly separate from governance. I am a person of faith, but we live in a pluralistic society, one committed to the division of Church and State. As such, I oppose the insertion of religion, even my own, into our governance.
Justice
I believe that we must strive for a more just society, where we treat one another with true respect and compassion, looking toward the better future we can build together.
I believe we must continue to reckon with the sins of our past. Our nation was built on beautiful ideals, a commitment to liberty, to freedom, and to protections for individual rights. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We built in on the labor of an enslaved population, and on the land we seized from the genocide of indigenous peoples. We must continue to support efforts to uplift communities that have been taken advantage of during our history, and seek a more equitable future. To strive towards a more perfect, and just, union.
I believe we must adjust our laws to the world of today, not the needs of the past. Technology is developing quickly, and our legal system must keep pace. While our history remains important, legislatures and judges must look to the future, not the past, when devising and interpreting the laws we live under. If we allow ourselves to be governed as though we were still in the 1800s, we will quickly find that our government has been outpaced by the information age we live in.
I believe too many of our wealthiest corporate entities are undertaxed. Taxes are the cost of maintaining our society, and providing essential, basic services. We must stop giving out tax cuts to large scale economic actors, and use the funds generated by that to more effectively regulate these entities. Far too often people live under the near complete control of their corporate bosses. We cannot delegate the role of the state to private entities.
I believe we must support and expand labor unions. While government can do some advocacy for workers dominated by corporate actors, in the end, the workers are best equipped to know what they need. Unionization is a right, and an important one to allow for a competitive, efficient economy.
I believe the purpose of prison is to restrict harm, not to punish. Sometimes, people need to be temporarily separated from society. However, the goal of prison should not be to torture those condemned to it. Far too often today do we leave people to suffer and languish in prison for minor crimes. We need to reform our penal system to allow for better reintegration into society, and to crack down on the torture and abuse common in the prison structure.
I believe our children should not have to live in fear. I grew up in the era of active shooter drills, and if that taught me anything, it is that we owe our children basic, common sense gun regulations. I refuse to allow yet another generation of children be exposed to the danger of school shooters the way my generation was.