We started slow and old-growth
yet steady.

The Senior Democrats
and Republicans
and Libertarians
and Independents
hosted a Community Integrity budgeting party.

Party favors were ballots
with options for small,
medium,
large,
and extra large service sectors
beginning with agriculture and permaculture support
and ending with zoning and long-term planning expenses;
the whole A through Z list of community services
we want for and with each other,
sometimes less,
sometimes more,
yet always competing less for cooperative more.

This Community Integrity Party
looked and felt like
an Old-Growth ReForesting Party.

We began with separate caucuses
to discern these diverse quantitative options
as to their quality of cooperative root systemic investment.

Education small
would remove more holistic arts and therapies
of music and dance troupes and bands
and choreographed orchestrations,
organic and regenerative harvesting and replanting
rhythms and harmonies,
painting murals of hope
and writing sonnets of creatively
and re-creatively
healing history.

No one liked that,
although some Old-Growth Republicans began to look wistful.

Education medium
was Business As Boringly Usual.
Budgets to feed evolving minds and bodies
competing with investments in more sewer lines
feeding our rivers less toxins
yet not feeding our top reforesting soil more fertility.

Education large
began with cooperatively owned and managed pre-schools
and ended with post-doctoral studies
in synergetic community as forestry enrichment
for optimizing mutual health-wealth
ethical and aesthetic designs.

Education extra large
suggested listening and learning would become our primary mission,
non-violent service of and for our municipality,
cooperative ownership and governance
of regenerative,
annually reiterative,
Slow and Old-Growth ReEducation Parties,
plantings,
feeding symbiotic organic fertilizers
to harvest health and wealth optimizing economic
and political outcomes.

Once the three caucuses were finished,
we formed one party circle
to compare reforesting notes,
to look for harmonies
and dissonance,
to see what both could together teach us
about further listening and learning
who to nominate as Community Integrity candidates.

We started our reforesting inside and out party
slow and old-growth steady,
study,
then began raising young candidates
to manage family and community integrity,
living in and on our slow and old-growth reforesting
Cooperative NonViolent Education Planet.