Hi neighbors!

 

I’m excited to be running for the Ward 2 seat on Beacon’s City Council.

 

My day job is raising money for Hudson Valley Seed, the nonprofit that brings school garden education to all of Beacon’s elementary schools. I bring a Masters in Nonprofit Management (like an MBA) and a postgraduate degree in Environmental Ethics to this work. I’ve been on Beacon’s Conservation Advisory Committee (CAC) for five years advocating for sustainability in Beacon, so I’ve seen how City Hall works from the inside. You might have also seen me around town building wooden furniture, fixing up my house near the Rec Center, taking pictures of nature, and hiking with my dogs.

 

I moved to Beacon six years ago because you can sit down at any bar or coffee shop and make a new friend, because the creative scene here is alive and inspires me, because it’s easy to access the river and the woods, because you can walk anywhere in town - but more than anything, I moved here because it felt like home.

 

The farm town in Connecticut where I grew up was in some ways a lot like Beacon: a mix of working farmers and office commuters to Hartford, we had a pretty even 50/50 split in political opinions, development opinions, opinions on which way to plant the corn - You name it, our opinions usually differed from our neighbors’.

 

But I knew that even my neighbors who thought I was totally wrong had my back when I needed it. Our neighbors whose religion differed significantly from my family’s still left us baskets of food on our porch when we didn’t have enough to eat. My neighbor who I’d never met, because he worked the night shift on the Hartford police force, showed up at our front door to let us know he’d keep an eye out to protect us after some kids tore the pride flag off our house. When the preacher at the biggest church in town started speaking hate and discrimination from the pulpit, the congregation walked out and suddenly the other churches in town had a lot more voices in their choirs.

 

I also learned growing up that nothing’s impossible when the whole community gets behind something. When our town library needed to be gutted, we all pitched in, unloaded the building in an epic bucket brigade of books, and stored the entire collection in 50 family's garages until it could be rebuilt a few years later. Fast forward twenty years, while living in Bangkok, Thailand, I saw thousands of people plant an entire forest of trees in just one hour because so many volunteers showed up. And I was one of the slew of volunteers that poured down to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and together we rebuilt that city, cleaning out and building up again the homes of strangers - Democrats and Republicans, black and white and Latinx, old and young - who became like family to us.

 

I’ve experienced that here in Beacon, when we rally to help families who fall on hard times, when the bingo hall was absolutely packed with people sharing their ideas for the Comprehensive Plan, when more than a thousand of us spoke out and got the front of 344 Main St shifted back to keep the sidewalk clear, when everyone helps dig each other out after each snowstorm.

 

That’s what community means to me, that’s why I’m proud to live here, and that’s how I will represent Ward 2 and all of Beacon on City Council. No matter who you are, no matter how long you’ve lived here, what color your skin is, or what we might disagree on, I’m here to to listen and speak for you on issues that matter to you, your families, and this community. I’ll speak out to protect the needs of the people who most need a voice - those of you who are having trouble making ends meet, who encounter racism every day, who are undocumented, who need help accessing social services - you are my priority. And together we can pitch in to make seemingly-impossibly wonderful things happen for Beacon’s future.

 

-Air Rhodes

 

P. S. Reach out and let me know what issues matter most to you, and what City Council can do to make Beacon better for you and your family.