Dear Editor: As we approach October 6, I wanted my final words before Election Day to be about hope.
Of course, it is my hope that my fellow community members will go to the polls and place their faith in my ability to serve Sitka with understanding, compassion, integrity and honesty.
I hope you trust that I will bring resistance when resistance is necessary, collaboration when collaboration can move us forward, and the fortitude to follow through when the work becomes difficult. I will do my research. I will ask questions. I will listen to my community and to my colleagues. I will be willing to learn, willing to reconsider, and willing to stand firmly when I believe something matters. And I will put in not only the work the position requires, but the work I believe this community deserves.
That is my hope.
But if October 6 brings a different outcome, then I have another hope equally important to me: that those our community chooses will do the same. And I have faith that they will.
Hope is an interesting part of what it means to live together in a community. It is not blind optimism, nor is it the belief that difficult things will somehow resolve themselves. Hope, at its best, asks something of us.
It asks us to believe that change is possible, and then participate in creating it.
Without that belief, communities become resigned to their problems. We begin accepting as permanent the things that may simply be difficult. Progress requires people willing to imagine something better, but it also requires people willing to do the much less romantic work of getting there.
To listen. To study. To compromise when compromise serves the greater good. To disagree when it does not. To accept what must be done and, sometimes, to have the courage to question what has always been done.
My hope for Sitka is that we continue learning how to work not merely alongside one another, but for one another.
I celebrate the successes of this community. I celebrate the successes of the people within it. I believe that when our neighbors prosper, when our children have greater opportunity, when our businesses succeed, when families feel secure and when people can imagine a future for themselves here, the entire community becomes stronger.
Your success does not diminish mine. It adds to it.
I hope we continue building a Sitka where our young people can see possibility ahead of them. A community that creates opportunity, encourages growth, protects a sense of safety and belonging, and understands that prosperity is not measured only economically, but also in the overall wellbeing of the people who call this place home.
We have difficult issues ahead of us. Building a sustainable economy, strengthening socioeconomic wellbeing, supporting families, creating opportunity and protecting the character of the community we love will require serious work.
We will not solve everything at once. But one by one, we can solve things.
With common sense. With compassion. With curiosity. With kindness. With honest disagreement. And with enough humility to recognize that no single person, institution or perspective holds every answer.
That is where my hope lies.
On October 6, I am asking for your faith in my ability to serve this community.
But more importantly, I am asking all of us to hold on to something larger than any one candidate or any one election: the belief that Sitka can continue to grow, adapt, solve difficult problems and become an even stronger place for the generations who will inherit what we build today.
That future belongs to all of us.
And I remain deeply hopeful about what we can build together.
Thank you, Sitka.
Sherri Blankenship, Sitka
