Have you ever been to a Town Hall gathering? Not I. City Hall, yes, and there to fight its folly. But now, lo and behold, I’ve been invited to a Town Hall event and even asked to contribute.

Here on the Left Coast, where California Dreamin’ is always in play, folks are gearing up for Trump Resistance. Or at least Readiness. So next week a media friend is hosting a Town Hall. Academics and politicos will chime in, at two-minute intervals, to share their thoughts on the new presidency. And, golly, I get to speak as a philosopher who works nights for the American Solidarity Party.

My theme will be “Crisis Brings Opportunity.” So, in two-minute splices, I’ll explore how California can contribute to America, no matter who’s president. Much of what the Golden State can contribute calls for us to stop what we’re doing and pivot in the opposite direction. We can stop promoting abortion tourism and start supporting pregnancy care centers. We can stop Cal Berkeley’s developing the Pentagon’s nuclear arsenal and start dismantling weapons of mass destruction. We can stop cozying up to the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley. Instead, we can promote worker ownership.

And there’s more. We can do something new and startling. After all, isn’t California where the future happens first? So let’s make the future different by making the present different—and this time for the better. Here’s my proposal. Call it Civic Voting Education. Some background: In the 15 weeks leading to the election, the Harris Campaign spent $1.5 billion. Elon Musk, the King of Plutocrats, spent $200 million on the Donald. The mega bucks went for non-stop indoctrination. To add insult to injury, voters were manipulated to give money to be spammed into giving more money. Sweetened with celebrity endorsements, it all went down the drain.

With Civic Voting Education, California can lead the nation in deprogramming voters. How so? Imagine a state that funded careful legislative analysis, issue by issue, candidate by candidate. Imagine legislative analysis that is rigorously non-partisan and thoroughly argument-based. Imagine a state that makes that fiduciary analysis widely available in public venues of every sort and never more than a click away.

To be sure, real legislative analysis goes beyond statistical summaries. It goes beyond sociological patterns. It goes beyond cost-benefit calculations. Such summaries and pattern identification and calculations matter a great deal, of course. But they are not nearly enough for Civic Voting Education.

Voting, rightly considered, is for the sake of the common good. In voting we can act in civic friendship to build a political community that recognizes the core constituents of human flourishing. They begin with life itself; they include knowledge, family, friendship, beauty, and leisure. Civic Voting Education would foster legislative analysis that recognizes and highlights these basic goods of human flourishing.

Again, the legislative analysis that Civic Voting Education calls for is non-partisan. But non-partisan analysis does not mean that the contributions of political parties are simply ignored. The American Solidarity Party, allow me to note, contends that we best advance the common good if we practice solidarity, decentralism, and economic democracy. Solidarity insists that the first measure of a just society is how it treats the most vulnerable. Decentralism tells us that authentic development begins at the grass roots level. Economic democracy means that without the widespread distribution of economic resources any political democracy is illusory.

A last question. If California launches a revolution with Civic Voting Education, how could we measure its success? The answer, gentle reader, is that success would come when you yourself, health permitting, could sensibly consider running for public office! By the way, if you need a campaign manager, just whistle “Solidarity forever.”