Russell: Thanks to voters for thinking outside the box

BRATTLEBORO — With a full and grateful heart to all the voters who supported my candidacy for assistant judge in Windham County, I express my thanks for their willingness to think outside the box and consider new possibilities for the future.

I also want to encourage everyone - regardless of voting loyalties - in the needed immediate response to the current climate crisis. If we do not reduce our polluting of the atmosphere by 80 percent in the next 35 years, nothing else matters: none of our political, economic, or social problems will matter if we destroy the life-sustaining systems of our home planet.

There is no time to waste. We must begin now to change our ways. There is only one Earth; there is no other place to call home.

Without clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, clean soil within which to grow our food, our goose is cooked, so to speak.

Humans have proven to be very adaptable beings, which, in this instance, might be our fatal flaw, similar to that of frogs. Experimenters have found that frogs put in water will adjust to a gradual increase in temperature of the water until they die and are cooked. But if the frogs are dropped into hot water, they immediately jump out!

Let us not adjust, adjust, adjust to the unlivable environmental conditions being created for us by the fossil-fuel industries, capitalism, and political domination.

One earth, one people, and one future. As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.”

If we do not succeed in this endeavor to live in harmony with creation, we will surely all die. The future is literally in our hands to create in cooperation with the blessings and directions of the Creator (if we listen and abide by that divine wisdom): “Treat each other as you wish to be treated” and share equitably!

Doesn't sound too difficult. Are we willing? Let's be wiser than frogs. Let's choose “systems change” rather than “climate change.”

Thanks to all who support me - and the Liberty Union Party's vision for remedy - for a future of our own design.